Placeholder: What I Intend By It

From the

  While my blog is still a bit of an empty wasteland, I want to tell you what I intend to offer as regular features:

Hymn-of-the-as-yet-unspecified-time-unit (week/month) - printable sheet music with some reflections on the hymn

Resource reviews - hymnals, missals, websites, and other tools

Essential Repertoire - for unison singing, for 4-part choirs, easy polyphony, treble-voiced music

Five Tips - lists of practical advice for every category of liturgical musician: choristers, directors, cantors, organists, planners, parishioners

And, of course, my invaluable rambling thoughts!

Comments

Post a Comment

Others are reading...

Ora et labora

From the
 O nce there were two novices working in the field, and they heard the bells ring for the Angelus. While one of them began to pray immediately, the other quickly lit a cigarette first. "Hey!" cried the first novice indignantly. "I asked the prior if I could smoke while I prayed and he said no!" "That's where you went wrong," replied the second, puffing away. "I asked prior if I could pray while I smoked, and he said yes." Jokes aside, sometimes it's hard to remember to pray the Masses we work for, especially if we are tucked away in a loft or a corner. Responsibilities will tug the corners of our mind, changes might need to be made and communicated, or just plain performance nerves get in the way. I have sat in the choir loft of many a restless choir director, as well as tried to manage my own ADHD while balancing presence for the job at hand with presence for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The struggle is real, whether you are a choir m
Keep reading »

Hymn of the Week: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERREN)

From the
 Hymn Title : Praise to the Lord, the Almighty Tune Name : LOBE DEN HERREN Meter : 86.86.4.7.8. An absolute staple hymn, Praise to the Lord has been published in 376 different hymnals, according to Hymnary.org - and it deserves this widespread fame. With a metrical pattern that only a German Chorale Master could dream up, you won't find any other text set to this tune, nor this tune with any other set of words. So why am I bothering to make it available to you, when I could be featuring other, more obscure hymns? Well, because I want to draw your attention to it - sometimes a gold standard gets cast aside as "too common," and falls out of use. Also your hymnal might have watered the words down, and we can't have that. LOBE DEN HERREN is a strong, singable tune, with a solid, rational arrangement. The long opening lines should be sung in one breath if possible, which should give you a sense of the kind of brisk tempo this piece demands, unless you are in a large, espec
Keep reading »

On Funerals

From the
This is a sort of meta-post about the purpose of funerals and their structure. Tune in next time for more concrete suggestions and printable music you can use! Nothing brings out my Expert's Ire like watching the portrayal of Catholic funerals on TV - kind of like the way my husband spends all of every submarine movie muttering "it never looks like that" or "that would never happen." No one wants to talk about death anymore, and so the Catholic Church's teaching on Last Things is often left to one side until one must face it personally, leaving vast numbers of people without any knowledge of how the funeral liturgy works, or even what it is for. Add into that the grossly misrepresented "Christian Funeral" on almost every form of modern media, and you have a situation rife with highly uncomfortable encounters for the organist or cantor. There are few trickier situations to navigate than a funeral liturgy. On the one hand, the raw feelings of the ber
Keep reading »