Views from the Choir Loft

Compline in the Home – via Podcasts!

Veronica Brandt · April 25, 2020

We’ve been praying Compline as a family now for years. We follow the 1962 Liber Usualis for the most part, adding in a Te Lucis tune for Marian Feasts which I found in a German Compline booklet.

Our booklet is now fairly complete. Having a booklet is helpful, but many people have asked to hear recordings. Although it varies less than the other hours of the Divine Office, there are still substantial changes, especially around this time of the Church’s year.

The latest version of our Compline Booklet is available at compline.brandt.id.au along with almost daily recordings from our family.

Other recordings of Compline which I am aware of include:

The monks of the Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux: barrouxchant.com have all their Divine Office available following the Antiphonale Monasticum.
The new Gregorian Neumz project: neumz.com following the Liturgy of the Hours. They have released recordings of Holy Week and a new app is in the pipeline.
A paid extension to the Universalis App offers Sung Compline from the Liturgy of the Hours sung by the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School
A reader suggested this Dominican Compline App including recordings from the Friars from St. Dominic Priory (St. Louis, MO)

But I’m not aware of one following the 1962 books. So, we’ll keep recording!

Looking back over my earlier posts on my family’s adventures with Compline: in 2014 I wrote about Working on a Compline booklet.Then in 2016 I shared a discovery: Compline Online with Chant Notation . Last year I looked at taking the first steps in How to Install Compline in Your Home.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

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About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. She lives near Sydney, Australia, with her husband and six children.—(Read full biography).

“Music List” • (Christ the King Sunday)

This coming Sunday—24 November 2024—is Christ the King Sunday (a.k.a. “Final Sunday in Ordinary Time”). Some have expressed interest in perusing my “ORDER OF MUSIC.” If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. You’ll notice we’re learning Moreau’s “Congregational Polyphonic Enhancement” for the OUR FATHER. And the the Mode 3 ENTRANCE CHANT is utterly sublime.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Entrance Chant” • Christ the King

Download the ENTRANCE ANTIPHON in English for the Solemnity of Christ the King (24 November 2024). It mimics the Mode III Latin version in a truly spectacular way. Corresponding to the vocalist score is this free organ accompaniment. If you’re someone who enjoys rehearsal videos, I attempted to sing it while simultaneously accompanying my voice on the pipe organ.

—Jeff Ostrowski

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This coming Sunday—17 November 2024—is the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Some have expressed interest in perusing my “ORDER OF MUSIC.” If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. You’ll notice we’re learning Moreau’s “Congregational Polyphonic Enhancement” for the OUR FATHER. For the record, our opening hymn is particularly beautiful. So is the Mode 6 ENTRANCE CHANT.

—Jeff Ostrowski

The Breviary in the Life of the Laity

Recently I have been enjoying looking through the inaugural (1927) edition of a 20th-century liturgical magazine called Orate Fratres. The July 1927 issue included an excellent article by a Chicago laywoman named Ellen Gates Starr entitled “The Delights of the Breviary: From the Point of View of a Lay Woman.” As we in the 21st century have recently undergone a (blessed!) re-translation of the missal into English, and as we await with joyful hope (please God, before Jesus comes back!) a similar re-translation of the breviary, the opening of her article reminded me of that old saying, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Nearly a hundred years ago, she penned words that could just as easily have been written today: “It is indeed a privilege to be allowed any participation, however slight, in the liturgical movement in the Church – the movement to bring back the classics of devotion, the Missal and the Breviary, into general use by the laity. The wonder is that they should ever have fallen into disuse. Nothing can take the place of these great universal prayers of the Church, the prayers of the Mass and the divine Office. One has only to know them to find them indispensable. And alas, how few of the laity know them!” I know that I have been tremendously nourished by regular praying of the breviary as of late, and my wish is that you and I, dear reader, may continue to nourish our interior lives with the official prayer of the Church, which present to us (in the Mass) and extend (in the Office) the fullness of Christ’s greatest gift to us – the gift of Himself – in the Most Holy Eucharist.

—Daniel Tucker

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—Jeff Ostrowski