St Meinrad shows the way forward for music publishing

Photo by Chris Light

Jeffrey Tucker, Sacred Music correspondent for the New Liturgical Movement, is understandably thrilled to see that the Archabbey of St Meinrad in Indiana is making its music available in pdf form free of charge on the internet with an explicit Creative Commons licence.

If you wish to buy a printed copy of one of the books, you can do so. St Meinrad have chosen to publish their books via Lulu. There you can see that some works are still only available as e-books (with a small charge) but the monks are committed to making them all available for free download in due course as and when they are able to prepare them.

The music that St Meinrad is offering is properly liturgical music - Gregorian chant - adapted for the English texts. I know that some musicians would argue that Gregorian chant is not suited for the English language and that other styles of sacred music might be better - or some other way of adapting Gregorian chant, or something. I'm not qualified to comment on this but I do think that it is important that a change is made in the way that music is available for sacred worship, and therefore I share Jeffery's enthusiasm for this development at St Meinrad.

If the music is available under a creative commons licence, no choir master needs to worry about the morality of printing of and photocopying music for their choir or for the congregation. (The problem is exacerbated by the practice of some publishers who inclusivise old hymns and then slap a copyright notice on the new and inferior version.) In terms of a "business model" my strong suspicion is that this freedom will also lead to higher sales for the printed books. If you are running a choir and have to get printed books for each choir member, you can soon run into the end of your budget and so will be reluctant to use newly composed music. If you are free to print and copy the music, you might well buy a couple of copies for the choir master and organist.

The use of Lulu publishing is an interesting move, too. Lulu is essentially a "print on demand" service and is well suited to books that are not going to need a very large print run. You can simply publish a book without being tied in to a contract with a publisher or a limited run of copies. If the book would benefit from being more widely available, Lulu offers various services such as marketing via Amazon if you want.

For traditional chant in Latin, the Church Music Association of America (Musica Sacra) been a pioneer in the field. Scroll down the sidebar for "Chant Resources" and you will find many pdfs that have been painstakingly prepared and cleaned up from old books. Again, you can purchase printed copies from the Lulu store of CMAA and they have an Amazon shop as well.

I have heard of other projects in preparation using this same combination of Creative Commons downloads and Lulu printed books. Doubtless, the technology will develop and I should imagine that particularly the price of books printed on demand will remain competitive as other firms come into the field.

A new Year's resolution of my own is to get a few things available on Lulu ...

Popular posts from this blog

1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
Read more

Request for Novena to Blessed Pius IX

Image
A priest friend of mine is ill in hospital. He has a special devotion to Blessed Pius IX. Could I ask you, of your charity, to say a Novena for his speedy recovery. Novena In Honour of Blessed Pius IX Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, hear our prayers and glorify your servant Pius IX, who consecrated the Universal Church to you. (Our Father...) O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, hear our prayer and glorify your servant Pius IX who declared you Immaculate. (Hail Mary...) Saint Joseph, spouse of the most pure Virgin Mary, hear our prayer and glorify your servant Pius IX who declared you the Patron of the Universal Church. (Glory be...) Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Mary, our Hope, and Saint Joseph hear our prayers and glorify your servant Pius IX , granting to us through his merits and intercessions the graces which we ardently desire: that the glory of God be revealed through Father's illness. (Our Father..., Hail Mary..., Glory be...
Read more

Saint Gabriel

Image
The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
Read more

Saint Ignatius on heresy, and the capsizing boat

Image
On the feast of St Ignatius, I offer my prayers and good wishes to some great Jesuits. Just off the top of my head, I think of Fr Joseph Fessio SJ the founder of Ignatius Press which has not only published the English translations of various works of Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, but has also given a break for good Catholic authors both of theology and of Catholic fiction. Then there is Fr Bob Spitzer SJ, with whom I studied in Rome many years ago, and Fr Paul Mankowski SJ who has written some superb articles over the years. Here in England, I recall Fr Anthony Meredith SJ, the great fatherly commentator on the Fathers of Cappadocia and in Rome, there is Fr Gilles Pelland SJ, the fierce French-Canadian patristics scholar was a bit harsh when I first arrived in the Holy City, but seemed to soften a bit when after 5 years he seeme satisfied that, though English, I was not a modernist. Many of my Jesuit priest friends and mentors have now reached “that night when no man can work”...
Read more

Downloadable booklets for Vespers

Image
Gregorian Chant Hymns is a most helpful website that I mentioned in a post just over a year ago. As I said then, the site "[...] promotes the learning of Gregorian Chant by making sheet music, recordings, translations, and instructions. There is a short guide to Gregorian Notation (those square notes) and to Latin pronunciation. Everything is available free of charge, in line with other great traditional music websites." Work has continued at the site and there is now a section which makes available pdf (or .docx format) booklets for Vespers for every Sunday of the Year and a few major feasts. There is the basic booklet for ordinary Sunday Vespers which is supplemented by separate files for the Sundays after Pentecost which contain the Magnificat and Collect. Then there are booklets, for example for Advent and Lent, where the office is different from the regular Sunday Vespers with its antiphons. All of the booklets have texts and notation for Benediction and the Maria...
Read more