Views from the Choir Loft

Abbey Psalms and Canticles

Jeff Ostrowski · March 31, 2025

Regarding “Pay-To-Pray” + Lectionary Errors

Many decisions, even those with monumental consequences, were made in secret.

Jeff Ostrowski · February 10, 2025

The New Lectionary & “Voice of God” Hymns

The sale of indulgenced prayers is immoral. Someday they’ll have to make restitution for this.

Corpus Christi Watershed · February 5, 2025

Abbey Psalms & Canticles • Copyright?

Confusion, Controversy, and Contradiction rules the day.

Jeff Ostrowski · November 12, 2024

Confirmed! • Bp. Woost Elected Chairman of “Committee on Divine Divine Worship”

For sixty years, Catholics have demanded to know what is gained by the ceaseless tinkering with liturgical translations.

Jeff Ostrowski · November 4, 2024

Re: Copyright Status of “Abbey Psalms & Canticles” (PDF Chart)

There’s been considerable online discussion about this. Our readers have a right to know what’s at issue.

Jeff Ostrowski · August 30, 2024

Leaked Document! • Comparison Chart—New Responsorial Psalms (“Abbey Psalms & Canticles”)

The NAB tried to use “overly casual” language—and the results are often an abomination.

Jeff Ostrowski · August 4, 2024

“Something Quite Odd” • Today’s Responsorial Psalm

Including a special comparison chart which shows the NAB translation vs. the “Abbey Psalms and Canticles” translation.

Andrea Leal · January 13, 2023

New Lectionary for the USA • Coming in 2028?

“Work hasn’t even begun on the next Lectionary, and there’s nothing definite about 2028 as a date.” — Father Andrew V. Menke, director of the USCCB liturgical committee

“Yahweh” in church songs?

My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Music List” • Pentecost Sunday

Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)

I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Antiphons Don’t Match?

A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).

—Corpus Christi Watershed

When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962

There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop

—Veronica Brandt

The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum

Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.

—Daniel Tucker