Mark, any music you might have submitted would have been for the New Music Reading Session at the Colloquium. In addition to gaining exposure of your music, you would have been able to benefit from sincere, constructive (as well as appreciative) comments that attendees might make. The next best thing, given that you cannot attend, would be to follow bonniebede's suggestion and post your works here. Alternatively, you could also submit your works to CPDL for publication (and free downloads) to an even wider audience.

On a somewhat different, although related note:

After having been a "lurker" here for some time, I finally joined the CMAA in 2011, shortly before the Colloquium that year, although it was not possible for me to attend. I was both surprised and heartened that the Recessional Hymn for the first Mass was Vaughan Williams "Come Down, O Love Divine" that used my two-part (double) descants. Since then, various factors have made it impossible for me to attend any Colloquium yet, most recently my wife's partial nephrectomy last June 20th to remove a renal cell carcinoma.

Sadly, once again this year major surgery for my wife coming up on June 17th means that it is impossible to attend the Colloquium in Pittsburgh. I had hoped to attend this year, bringing along a couple of works to be read at the New Music Reading Session in celebration of my 75th birthday on July 2nd, as well as getting to meet, at long last, many friends and colleagues. Instead, however, I assure everyone that my thoughts and prayers will be with all those who are able to attend and participate in this wonderful event.

which is something I am working out and if I approach one of the big publishers do they handle all that ?

Publishers handle that stuff for you. They do not need (or want) composers to attempt to deal with copyright issues themselves.

ICEL allows use of their stuff for free if you give your their-stuff-using stuff for free. They want to be paid if you get paid. (Even though I am anti-copyright in principle, this seems completely reasonable to me.)

If you want to self-publish for money, figure out what you want to charge and ask ICEL what you should do. The "how many do you plan to sell" thing applies to traditional publishing, where you print a bunch of something all at once. If you plan to sell it as a Print-on-demand or digital download, just tell them that. They will let you know how to pay them.

It's TOL-LIS, plain and simple.

See this thread and this thread.

In terms of double letters, it seems they are always split. Otherwise, simply visually, we don't know what to do with them (Welsh or Spanish singers would also misread double-L, right?

My experience is that texts conform to standard syllabication rules and it is our job as choir directors to teach our choirs how to sing these words properly. Sor-row is a very common problem: I have them mark their scores and sing "Sah - roh" so they don't sing or sustain the 'r' in the first syllable. I hope this is helpful.

It's odd to have syllabification rules for text which don't really correspond to pronunciation in either speech or singing.

OK I am taking the bull by the horns with this syllabification schtuff.. and I am pulling my hair out ( I dont have all that much left to begin with) because FINALE is sticking hypens in all over the place and I cant seem to get it to stop.. Any suggestions on how to get it to cooperate ?

Well for instance over the two words " Et ascendit" The Et is one eighth note and the "asc" is the second eight note.. and I cant seem to get the silly thing to separate them..

is that more understandable the text should be "et asc-en-dit" but when I enter it , it comes out Et-asc-en-dit. It really is maddening.. LOL


Thank you all for sharing.

I wonder if Sibelius oops I mean Finale is trying to apply English rules for syllabification to the Latin text. In that case, you might have to turn off the automatic hyphenation, unless the program also has rules for Latin.

you can add your own hyphenation (at least in sib) by simply typing the syllable and then hitting the hyphen key and then the next syllable. You can also auto enter the text and let it put in the hyphens. When finished, simply delete the wrong words and enter them manually. you can also move the hyphens into the middle of a blank space manually with drag and drop. (i was an ambassador [did training workshops] for sib years ago)

Don't use "type into score." Type the lyrics in the lyrics window and use click assignment. You'll be much happier with the results.

Mark, sorry I missed the detail that you were using Notepad rather than the full version. I've been using Finale since around 1996, so it's like second nature to me at this point. The lyrics window is a lot better than the type into score method IMHO, so I hope you can find a way to secure the full version for yourself.

Oh and one other question on a bit of research to solidify my own understanding on one point. In the Music there are a couple of places where a particular syllable is split or stretched over a couple of notes.. I was looking through some music to find some examples.. and was looking for some examples .. any ideas ?

Like he said.

On the other question: in the Gregorian chant Mass ordinaries, you can find chants that are syllabic (one note per syllable), or neumatic (some syllables have melodic gestures of more than one note -- i.e., from two up to several) or melismatic (some syllables have extended melodies).

This Pater noster is mostly syllabic:
http://gregobase.selapa.net/chant.php?id=3326

This Agnus Dei (Agnus Dei VIII) is a neumatic chant:
http://gregobase.selapa.net/chant.php?id=2760

This Kyrie (Kyrie III) is a melismatic chant:
http://gregobase.selapa.net/chant.php?id=825

... there might be places where we want to take the LIS and split that over say.. LI on one or two notes and the S on the ending note.

No, not at all. This is counter to standard text underlay for a final syllable that extends over several notes. The traditional and accepted method (already a part of engraving programs, such as Finale and Sibelius) is to have "word extensions" in the form of an underscore that starts where the final syllable ends and runs to the beginning of the final note assigned to that syllable. To do it otherwise will only confuse and (probably greatly) annoy musicians trying to follow or to sing the text.

... the ending syllable is -alem ...

No, that is the final TWO syllables; the ending syllable is "-lem" (or "-em" depending upon your hyphenation predilections).

When in doubt, consult an authoritative reference, such as "Behind Bars" by Elaine Gould, p. 447:

An extender, a line of stave-line thickness, follows a final syllalable or monosyllabic word that extends beyond one written note, including a tied note.

The line extends to the last written note, but not to the end of the duration. Any puncuation goes at the end of the word, before the extender.

I think I have found "the error of my ways :) I spent some time reviewing Masses from Lizst, Beethoven, Byrd etc.. and it seems pretty uniform for all of them save one.. which I will sum up to either one of the predilections mentioned above. I am making those changes to fall in uniformity with that standard. It does make me ponder ( possibly its just my own head banging,) but I wonder why it is, that if everyone agrees, that the rules of the text do not correlate strictly speaking to the musical expression, if there were not some discussion about such things to allow for the expression as long as it did not take away from the text of the Mass or its technical needs..

I suppose the questions would be clearer with an example to view.. and of course I am sure there will be more to come ...

Do you need to go through this process just for a hymn group or can you submit directly to places like OCP? I have written several and tried them with (no surprise) rejection. I think my stuff was too introspective rather than collective and not "Catholic" enough. I have a new group with psalms as the basis to overcome any problems of being too personal or sounding too evnagelical.

HFS, if you're sending your music to a publisher of Catholic church music, you can let them deal with getting church approval. If you start publishing your works yourself, then you can contact the office of the vicar general of your diocese to find out how the process works there.

Big publishers like OCP probably get a lot of new music submissions, certainly more than they can take on as projects, so if they turn down something you've submitted, that doesn't mean much.

If you're looking for feedback about your work, that's probably something to try to get locally, from musicians (composers and performers) working in the same style as your compositions. You can certainly post something here for comment (under the "new compositions" category), and probably get useful observations about technical aspects of the composition, but when the commentary gets into subjective aspects, you'll need to take some of that with a grain of salt.

Full monty CHG..text;melodic line;keyboard accompaniment in most cases. Occassionally guitar and occassionally chorale 4 part . It's tough for me because I can't play keyboard well enough to accompany myself so I use Songwriter which allows me to hear it all. I can't seem to write simply enough for my shabby playing ability. I keep the range parameters between A below middle C and D above C2 unless I'm doing a solo piece.
One piece is a cappella chant for the Exultet text in OCP before 2013 just because I sang it for almost 19 years every Easter and like it. (I didn't tell anyone I was doing my own thing. Once it was sung it was a done deal and we kept it.)I'm only claiming copyright for the melody there. One other uses the traditional melody of Simple Gifts but the text and arrangement is mine--it was for a Kateri contest and the melody was stipulated. They said they wanted something that combined Indian and Catholic sentiment so I wrote Hymn to the Great Spirit God for voice, flute and drum. A traditional 4 part chorale with organ extolling the Trinity won. Go figure. Nothing American Indian about that.
My new "album" is much improved over the first one. I'm starting to get the hang of writing for keyboard. Once I have the copyright registered I may post some of them.