Some of you may already be familiar with Gregorio, a newly developed platform for the typesetting of Gregorian chant. Gregorio is a free and open source software that was created with the hope that everyone everywhere would have access to free and beautiful editions of Gregorian chant for use in the liturgy. Many projects have taken up Gregorio as the means of engraving Gregorian chant scores. Our own Simple English Propers project uses it, as does Steven van Roode, as do many others around the world in their work of chant engraving.
Although Gregorio is an open and free software, you can still make donations to the project here.
Andrew Hinkley is something of an anomaly in the world of chant engraving. Andrew has a particular passion for making chant editions readily available, scalable, and easily adaptable, and so far has typeset the majority of the Graduale Romanum chants in the Gregorio platform which he has been sharing with the world, in a beta phase, at the Caecilia Project.
Here is a rendering of Andrew’s work with the Graduale Romanum propers for the 3rd Sunday of Advent.
Keep in mind that this is simply one rendering of the Gregorio code (GABC) which can be used to create Gregorian chant scores. This code, which Andrew intends also to share freely with all, can be encoded in a variety of ways, easily changing fonts, page size, staff size, margins, colors, spacing, and on and on. That Andrew is producing this raw data is an immeasurable gift to us and to the world of sacred music. He is to be highly commended for his most generous gift to the Church.
What is truly wonderful about Andrew’s project is that it is truly “open source”, meaning that Gregorian chants have truly been boiled down into source code that can be used in unimaginable ways.
Thank you Andrew for your tireless work for the good of the liturgy.