Two pieces of news, the first of which affects my post yesterday on permission to distribute Mass settings with the new text. That approval has been granted, which explains why some are available and some are not. My quick review of them all focuses on the positive: Lisa Stafford’s Mass of Grace is the best of all the offerings by mainstream publishers. It has tested very well with choirs and people around the country. Cantica Nova also offers three new settings, which I’m quite sure are excellent, particularly the setting by B. Andrew Mills.
The second piece of news comes from the site that seems to break all the news these days, PrayTell. The Revised Grail Psalter has been released and will soon be available.
There is a serious problem with this book and it has nothing to do with the translation itself. The Grail in the UK is seriously proprietary about this text and it variously authorizes agents to distribute it and extract money from people for printing, singing, and recording it. When the Conception Abbey revised the Grail, it had to enter into a legal agreement first with the Grail and second with the authorized distribution agent in the United States, the GIA.
These agreements are all secret, but the GIA has not been secret about its intention to charge whatever sum it wants for the right to print the text, meaning that GIA will charge OCP, WLP, Cantica Nova, and every one else, and ultimately you and me and every Catholic in the pews, for singing the Psalms, and, if you do not pay, you will be hearing from GIA’s lawyers. Somehow, our naive friends at the USCCB forgot to do their homework on these matters before leaping into this legal pit lorded over by a for-profit publisher that has no official connection to the Catholic Church.
Regardless, then, of the merits of the Revised Grail, this approval and release is absolutely no cause for celebration. What friends of the Roman Rite need to do is to make sure that several public domain translations of the Psalms are at least permitted to be used at Mass for the Responsorial Psalm. If this happens, hardly anyone will be willing to pay GIA a dime for the legal right to praise God, and then perhaps the Grail in the UK, together with Conception and all the other players, will rethink their business strategy that depends so heavily on using the state to impose a tax on the faithful for worshiping God.
not sure what the news is…they continue to prepare it, as they have for several years now, correct?
Re the Mass of Grace: I did not know that a 'refrain/verse' arrangement of the Gloria is allowed.
That's the version the site records but there is the real one without the antiphon thing.
Mr. Tucker, I understand your point about copyrighting liturgical texts. But, although I'm no lawyer, the licensing info on GIA's website http://www.giamusic.com/pdf/Licensing%20the%20Revised%20Grail%20Psalms.pdf seems fairly permissive to me – at least for our purposes.
I just re-read them. It's terrible, a recipe for piracy and plunder. No matter: in a digital age, these restrictions will mean that the Grail won't get a footing. People will use other things, just as GIA itself deliberately changes text and music in order to avoid paying royalties. Others will do the same.
Your usual eccentric and angry take on GIA's role in publishing the revised Grail Psalter, Jeffrey. If you have any grounds whatever for assuming bad faith and deliberate extortion on the part of GIA, you should share them with us. If not, your habitual scorn is both a little graceless, and lacking in due charity.