Thank you all for participating in the “beta” of our “Simple Propers” project! With your feedback you are helping work out a system of production that utilizes open source software, public domain and creative commons material, and organized volunteer efforts; what we are able to achieve so far with these resources alone seems rather remarkable. The project is building steam, and we’re excited for the new possibilities that it may open up for Catholic liturgical music resources.
St. Basil School of Gregorian Chant
A note from M. Jackson Osborn on upcoming chant educational programs from the St. Basil School of Gregorian Chant:
Beginning Saturday, the 2nd October St Basil’s School of Gregorian Chant will conduct an eight week course in chant at St Basil’s Chapel at the Univ of St Thomas. The course will cover basic reading of chant notation and solfege, the development of chant from ancient cantillation, and its progress through the Gregorian and Carolingian periods, as well as chant in the ordinary and proper of the liturgical seasons. Guest faculty will offer lectures on the history of our liturgy, chant in mediaeval and illuminated manuscripts, and chant in the thought of Vatican II and successive Popes. Chant in both English and Latin will be taught, with emphasis laid on repertory and singing. Also, the new translation will be discussed. The course consists of three hour sessions on eight Saturday mornings and all day for the last Saturday, culminating in the solemn vigil of Christ the King. The mass will be all plainsong, featuring the Burgess-Palmer propers and Mass XII (Pater cuncta) according to Fr Columba’s adaptation. All readings and the prayers of the faithful will be sung.This, following a winter workshop with Fr Columba, a post-Easter 8 week course, and a summer 8-week course, will be our last offering for this year. We resume next year with another winter workshop with Fr Kelly on the three days preceding the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday.Please pray for the success of our continuing efforts at satisfying the great thirst among Catholics for the genuine music of our faith–and for experiencing the Roman Rite in its inalienable integrity.
Introducing “LiturgiCal”
Christopher Berardi, lead developer of the Sacred Music Project has just released an early beta of a new piece of software, LiturgiCal. Find more information here.
LiturgiCal will be the feature that drives the forthcoming Sacred Music Project web platform that will organize Public Domain and Creative Commons sacred music resources, scores, recordings, catechesis, and much more. LiturgiCal is a 0.1 beta release and additions will be made each day, possibly several times a day. Be sure to check back often as it develops. It is sure to be a very useful tool for Catholic musicians.
You could think of the new SMP platform as a sort of “liturgical CPDL”, or a liturgy planning resource that organizes and makes available musical scores that are proper to or pertinent to a given liturgy. It is our hope to have a “complete parish resource” available in the form of a web resource in time for the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal. Look for a beta release this Fall.
Please use your imagination when considering this project. A vision has been put forth and a team effort has begun to move forward in realizing it. These are signs of early beginnings, but we have great hopes that this will soon become a resource that could provide to a parish everything that they need to run and organize a music program, and much more.
If you would like more information or if you would like to participate in some way please contact us.
Simple Propers for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
Download simple propers for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
The method for producing these simple propers is really beginning to come together. A team of diligent workers are putting together much of the source material for the project, but we need more hands. At least 75% of the time and effort that goes into producing this resource involves the compiling and formatting of texts. These tasks are what we need help with in order to put together a resource like this covering the entire liturgical year. The fruits of this labor will be available beyond this project–an online source for the singing of the psalms, with texts pointed, psalm verse designations for all proper antiphons, antiphon source texts, translations, incipits, scripture sources, and much much more.
If you see value in this project and can help in some way please contact us!
Commercial Publishers vs. Retired Protestant Minister
Most of us Catholic musicians are familiar with the copyright policies of the major Catholic music publishers. We are told in copyright warnings, in annual reprint licenses, by the support staff of these publishers that we are absolutely not allowed, ever, to make a photocopy of a hymn from a published hymnal (without paying a licensing fee). The reason for this, it is said, is to protect the publisher’s financial investment in the musical engraving of the hymn. It doesn’t matter if this hymn, text, and harmonization have been in the public domain for 200 years. Even if only the engraving is all that the publisher can legitimately claim copyright on, this is enough to assess reprint licensing fees which often begin with a $20 base fee.
Well, it seems that the weighty “financial investment” that warrants these reprint licensing fees is somehow able to be avoided by individuals, such as a single retired protestant minister and organist who has put together SmallChurchMusic.com.
This website is not flashy, it is not perhaps meeting Web 2.0 standards of design, but it does currently contains 3260 public domain mp3 hymn recordings, 2270 free pdf hymn scores, 3110 hymn texts, and 610 downloadable midi files–all of a remarkably high quality. And did I mention that these are available for free download? That reprint licenses are not required?
So how is that a retired protestant minister can share freely with the world the best music of his tradition as a result of a personal project that amounts to not much more than a hobby, when for-profit corporations cannot afford to lose the return on their financial investment in the typesetting of a public domain hymn for one of their hymnals? Perhaps the reason is slowly becoming clearer.
I wonder how the world of Catholic liturgical music could be affected if a bunch of similarly devoted individuals pooled their time, energy and resources to produce something of a similar nature for Catholic liturgy?
Simple Propers for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
As a continuation of our experiment in sacred music resource production here are a set of “simple propers” for this week:
Download simple propers for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
This work is the fruit of a collaboration between a host of Catholic musicians who have discerned a need in the Church for very simple settings of the propers, which are aimed at the current ordinary state of parish life. A team of volunteers is going to work on the compiling and formatting of source texts for this project and potentially many others, the collaborative effort can be followed by clicking on the links on the sidebar under “Open Source Projects”.
Help is still needed! If you would like to contribute some of your time to the project, even if it is small please, email me.
As noted last week, we are experimenting with various approaches to the “simple propers” idea. What seems to be working well, as confirmed by feedback from parish musicians of many stripes, is an approach where two antiphon settings are offered: One in the ultra-simple form of a St. Meinrad Psalm Tone, and a second in the form of melodic formulas that seek to meld the nature of a psalm tone with certain features of through composed Gregorian antiphons. These formulas are being developed by the writer of this post under the guidance of Fr. Columba Kelly, a known master of English chant. The challenge in this approach is to find a melodic formula that will work consistenly with all of the textual variations that are found in the English language (compared to the greater consistencies found in Latin), all while remaining intuitive to the amateur singer.
Here are two formulas that were developed for this week (note: these may change still and are still in a process of refinement)
The first is a Mode 8 setting of this weeks offertory:
This formula draws some inspiration from the Mode 8 “solemn” Gregorian psalm tone”, uses a 4-part structure, and is slightly more ornate in its intonations and terminations than the introit formulas that have been used thus far, which are of a similar nature. The goal here is to have a set of 8 formulas (one in each mode) for each genre (for the Introit, Offertory, and Communion–a total of 24 formulas). And the result, it is hoped, is that the formula is learned once by singers and thereafter the melody will be intuitively anticipated when it is used again and again.
The second example is a Mode 5 setting of this week’s Communion:
The formula here is essentially taken from the Mode 5 Gregorian psalm tone, with enough variation to set it apart from it, with needed adaptations to work well with English texts.
Be sure to look a the rest of the chants and please share feedback! Our hope is to be able to share the fruits of this work two weeks in advance to make it easier for use in liturgy–for now we’re doing the best we can!
There is still much help needed. If you would like to contribute some of your time to the project, even if it is small (no specialization needed) please email me.
Simple Propers for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
As promised, here is another experimental set of “Simple English Propers” that are aimed at the average parish situation.
Download simple propers for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.
The processes in use here were described in great detail last week. The same processes were applied to this weeks proper texts. Antiphon translations are taken from the Gregorian Missal, and psalm verses are taken from Douay Rheims, although slightly modified to reflect a more modern English.
We at the Chant Café would love to see a conversation about these settings spring up in the comment box. As I said before, these are “experimental”, and there is nothing that can advance an experiment like review and critique. Please don’t be shy. No one’s feelings will be hurt. We really want feedback from all walks. Many of the more “expert” opinions have already been discerned, but feedback from people who are considering the needs of their parishes who don’t sing the propers at all would be most valuable!
Music directors and schola directors–Ask yourself: “What would I do if I found myself in a parish that didn’t know what propers were, and had no exposure to chant in any form, whatsoever.” How would you bring them along? What would you recommend to a parish musician across town that would like to begin singing the propers at Mass? With no experience in chant, with virtually nothing but a humble interest? Where would suggest they start?
This is the sort of need that this project is seeking to address. Please share your thoughts, especially while we’re still in “experimental mode”!