[ninenot]

Of interest to some.

[Ostlandr]

They don't make music like that anymore. Properly sung by people of faith, those chants can shake the walls.

[Jim Noble]

Can I hop in on your thread?

I'm going to an RC church every week now with my Catholic wife and our 4 kids (it's a long story).

Anyway, they just built a new church, and, for the first time have hymnals, real ones. I'm a hymn-singing Congregationalist, by birth, and an Episcopal church refugee of late.

Anyway, the entry hymn today was called "Sing a New Church".

Now, the lyrics were horrible (what's wrong with the old church?), but the worst part is that the music is the music to "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing", one of my all-time top ten hymns.

"Prone to wander/Lord I Feel It/Prone to Leave the God I Love/Here's My Heart, Lord, Take and Seal It/Seal It for Thy Courts Above"

Who decides to erase the beautiful words and replace them with a slam against their own Church?

If you want to have new hymns, get your own music!

Seriously, who decides what goes in a Catholic hymnal?

[AnAmericanMother]

If you're going to use English translation, the old Book of Common Prayer and Psalter translations lend themselves best to chant. E.g. the Magnificat:

MY soul doth magnify the Lord, * and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded * the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold, from henceforth * all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me; * and holy is his Name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him * throughout all generations.
He hath showed strength with his arm; * he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, * and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; * and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel; * as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son * and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be *
World without end, Amen.

This one sings very nicely with the chant straight out of the Liber. I've even sung it once, just for fun.

[Siobhan]

If you are not going to sing in Latin or Greek, the Anglican English translations are the best for the Psalms and the Scriptural canticles. In fact many of John Mason Neales's translations of Office Hymns and other Latin chants remains a high point in English translation that others have bettered only on the rarest of occasion.

There are only 2 Catholic Hymnals worth having in the pews in the United States. The best is the St. Michael Hymnal published by St. Boniface Parish I think. The second best (with some real deficiencies) is the Adoremus Hymnal. Everything else should be scrapped including G.I.A.'s RitualScreed.

All IMHO.

Now the Anglican Use Roman Catholics in the US use a couple of sources but their base is the grand 1940 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church which was produced under the watchful eye of that great Anglo-Catholic the Rev. Canon Charles Winifred Douglas. I learned to play the organ by playing through that Hymnal and hold it in highest regard.

[ELS]

A Gregorian Chant Master Class (although the title says "Master Class," it is actually an introduction. It includes a CD with sung examples of the topics discussed in the book.)

A couple of excerpts from the biographical sketch of Dr. Marier (if you click on the book cover above, there is a link to this bio):

"Through his decades-long study and collaboration with the monks of the Abbey of St. Pierre de Solesmes, France, and his own prodigious scholarship, Dr. Marier grew to be one of the most respected figures of the American liturgical movement of the 1940's and 50's, and over the course of the next fifty years came to be regarded as one of the world's experts in the field of chant studies and practice."

"From his experience of directing and instructing scores of chant choirs in both Europe and America, as well as his work with Mrs. Justine Ward in teaching chant to children, he developed an effective approach to the teaching of Gregorian chant which has not been surpassed."

[sojourner]

Thanks so much for posting! I've been thinking about this stuff and what Catholic church music should be. I'm a lifelong church musician and recent Catholic convert. Our parish uses the useless OCP crap and I haven't been sure where to turn. Am saving this conversation for later reading.