My copy of Office of Compline, by Fr. Samuel Weber, arrived yesterday and I can’t be more excited about it. It is far more impressive than I imagined it would be. It includes the complete office of compline (night prayer) for the ordinary form, with notation for singing. The Latin is on the left and the English is on the right. The notation is on a four-line staff. The English adaptions are just wonderful in every way. One can’t be marvel that such a resource is only now available more than forty years after the liturgical reform, but, at the same time, it is still thrilling that it is finally here.
There is a special treat in here that seems to be unadvertised. It includes an entire section of beautiful hymnody for Compline at the end of the book, again with Latin on the left and English on the right. The Office is precisely the place for hymnody in the Roman Rite. And if all you have known of hymns are what is fed to you by contemporary resources, you are in for a real treat here. These hymns are gorgeous, stable, prayerful, singable, and steeped in Catholic history. They require no instruments. I want to learn every one of them. They are that inspired. This section alone makes the book worth the purchase price. I see no reason why these Office hymns should not be introduced in parishes where hymns are in demand for Mass. They are leagues above the usual fare.
The price is $16.11 at Ignatius Press. It is a hardbound book. It has a ribbon. The inside printing is two color. The binding is excellent. It is a beautiful product, one suitable for parish or home use. Every Catholic should be proud to own this and use it as a source of sung prayer. Congratulations to Fr. Weber for a splendid job of engraving and composing. And congratulations to Ignatius Press for taking an interest in liturgical music and backing this project. I wish it every success.
I have a reservation, however, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the product. It has to do with the method of distribution. Ignatius Press has locked the book behind a copyright wall for no apparent reason. You can’t even purchase a digital version of this book. This means that everyone who uses it has to buy a copy, which means of course that few people will buy a copy. Had they made it available for purchaseable download or even free download, they would have guaranteed a much larger circulation and thereby much larger sales.
Ignatius Press, if you are reading: hear me out. If this book fails to break even, do not blame the author and do not blame Catholic book buyers. Blame a short-sighted publishing vision that is in denial about the world of digital information. This is a product that needs promotion. You have the means at your disposal to do just that. Promote it. Then it will find users and therefore buyers. This is not the 1950s or even the 1980s. I fear that the failure to realize this would mean that this book will not gain the traction is much deserves. Think about it: seriously. A book like this is a tool for evangelization.
You're absolutely right on with the concerns about the book-only distribution. If there's anything that needs to be digitally available, this is it. I'd love to be able to download it to my iPad. Also, $16 a copy makes this book prohibitively expensive for parishes who might be interested in using it on an occasional basis, say less frequently than once a week. At a minimum, there should be a PDF version with a parish licensing model available so that parishes can print out the pages needed for a particular public celebration of Compline without having to buy multiple copies of the hardbound book.
Yes, Father, exactly, but why even a licensing model? It is all ridiculous. The Gospel writers never licensed their texts. The scribes never licensed their manuscripts. The whole point of the Gospel is to….spread it as far and wide as possible. I would say there is something fundamental unChristian about restricting access to truth and beauty, something even contradictory to the spirit of the faith. And if anyone starts preaching profit to me, I can cite many years of experience showing that giving and getting in the publishing world are not incompatible. In any case, the restrictions on this particular book will NOT increase sales. I fear that the restrictions are going to doom it to oblivion right at the time it is most needed.
What ends up happening if a book is given freely online is that people simply print off what they need, instead of purchasing the book. Both publisher and author lose that way.
So says the old and dated conventional wisdom, and if you want to believe that, nothing will convince you otherwise, even the whole experience of the post-print age.
And consider what the above statement implies about your business model, if true. It means that people could get what they want from a publisher for zero price but instead the publisher withholds the thing that would satisfy the demand pending payment, meaning that commerce ends up being reduced to a form of blackmail. That is not a good business model.
"It means that people could get what they want from a publisher for zero price but instead the publisher withholds the thing that would satisfy the demand pending payment, meaning that commerce ends up being reduced to a form of blackmail."
..except that the book never would have been produced in the first place if the publisher did not think it could make money by selling it…
Oh is that so? Tell that to the authors of the millions of print on demand titles out there that sell to the author and his family only.
My fundamental point here is that digital and physical goods are complementary goods in many cases today, and not a priori substitutes for each other.
I'm always amused at how talk about publishing in the Catholic world reduces otherwise charitably-minded to people to the ideological impulses of Scrooge McDuck.
Can someone explain the Wednesday duplication of Psalms?
Jose
Jeffrey, I agree that this needs to be as widely available as possible, and the current licensing of the liturgical texts is ridiculous. My preference would be to place all English liturgical text under the Creative Commons or some other similar open copyright.
Calling it a "licensing model" was a bad choice of words. I meant paying one charge to cover the costs of producing the electronic format (including licensing charges for the English translation), and allowing for unlimited reproduction. Of course, this is assuming that ICEL et al. would allow for such a package to be released if the English translation is the official ICEL translation.
yes, Father, we completely agree.
I know many musicians self-producing very high quality recordings — it would never occur to them NOT to put it on iTunes (to say nothing of companies producing commercial recordings, for whom iTunes is bread and butter). It's not just a matter of what media something is in, but how people search for materials, and expect to be able to consume them.
I used to sell Yellow Pages advertising. There are people in that industry that actually believe an online Yellow Pages ad (i.e., a JPEG of the print ad, on a dedicated Yellow Pages site only) is enough to promote something online. This would be, in my opinion, the equivalent of a publisher printing an online catalogue on its website, with only the option of mail-ordering print materials online. Not smart.
I got my copy today and it is fantastic.
Jose, look at the psalm tone. For Paschaltide it's always 8G. For the rest of the year, Sunday I through Tuesday are also 8G, but Wednesday through Friday are different tones, so the psalms for those days are printed twice.
My question after a quick first look is, why is the melody for the Deus in adiutorium quite different from what is in the Liber Cantualis, and also from the different one in the Liber Usualis? And why is the Noctem Quietam a slightly different melody (drops only a whole step at the end rather than a fourth) than the one found in both the LC and the LU?
Fr. Brian
I don't think I said that right about the Noctem Quietam, but my question is why does Fr. Weber lessen the interval at the end? Fr. Brian
An interesting question, Fr Brian. I noticed that too. There are also a few rubrical differences between this work and Liber Hymnarius concerning which hymn tune (and hymn!) is to be sung at which season.
All the differences are minor; this is not a complaint, just a question. I can only surmise that these differences come from the need for an accompanying English text on the left hand page. It is wonderful how similar the Latin and English chants are in Fr Weber's work; the chants for both are beautiful.