Musical treasures re-discovered at St. Michael's Choir School in Toronto
  • soarmarcsoarmarc
    Posts: 42
    As soon as I read this, I couldn't wait to share... A trove of liturgical music—composed by St. Michael's Choir School founder Msgr. John Edward Ronan—has been re-discovered, catalogued, and digitized, and it will all be made available for free download! Read more below.

    "TORONTO - Very soon church choirs around the world will have 900 manuscripts of music, most of it lost, forgotten and long out of print, available for free download from the St. Michael’s Choir School web site. The music, almost all of it liturgical and most of it set to Latin texts, was written by Msgr. John Edward Ronan, founder of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Choir School."

    "The sheer size of the catalogue will be a revelation to the Canadian and international music community...It’s going to increase St. Mike’s visibility in the world at large and it’s also going to put Fr. Ronan on the map as a significant creator of this substantial corpus of Catholic liturgical music.”


    http://www.catholicregister.org/item/19675-musical-treasures-discovered-almost-by-accident
    Thanked by 8JonLaird JulieColl BruceL expeditus1 Jeffrey Quick Aristotle Esguerra Casavant Organist eft94530
  • canadashcanadash
    Posts: 1,501
    Excellent! Someone just handed me an old St. Mike's hymnal, with harmonizations by Msgr. Ronan, but it was the melody edition! This is great... and they will have it up for free! May God grant him eternal rest.
  • JonLaird
    Posts: 245
    Robin Williams and I overlapped in the sacred music program at CUA, and have not had any communication since, so imagine my surprise when his picture pops up in your link! I do not believe that I know any of Ronan's music, but I do look forward to seeing the fruits of this project, because I would trust Robin's judgment in liturgical music. Thank you for sharing the story.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    Cool! I'd love to see the thesis too...in the course of The Musicology Project, I've encountered a fair bit of Canadian sacred music. (The Canadians have been doing well in digitizing their heritage, though not as well as the Australians. Now, where's the Indian Latin church music?).
  • soarmarcsoarmarc
    Posts: 42
    FYI, the Ronan Collection is finally online: http://www.smcs.on.ca/ronancollection

    This is a massive catalogue composed of Msgr. Ronan's handwritten manuscripts—a life's work of choral arrangements and compositions of Propers, Ordinary, hymns, and songs. Much of it has likely never been heard far beyond the walls of St. Michael's Choir School in Toronto.

    And it's all available for free!
    Thanked by 1Heath
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