It is made available courtesy of the Solesmes monastery.
This is an inauspicious release of a massively significant thing. I don't have to tell you why it is significant. I'm posting here first so that you can get it and not pile on later when others hear that it is available. What I'm hoping to avoid is another server crash such as we had when the Grad Rom went online.
So let's roll this out with some sense of discipline over the next week, shall we?
Everyone does realize what this means? It is the first time in the postconcilar period that people have been able to look at (at zero cost) the music that is actually attached to the Mass in the liturgical ordering specified by the 1970 Missal. And it is a special advantage that it is in English.
It's one thing to see an old Graduale for the old Mass; something else to see how this music is embedded in the new Mass.
I do believe that this one link will have a huge effect.
Kevin, publishers are slowly figuring out that online and offline are mutually enhancing complements. This will increase sales. In a few years, this will be obvious to everyone.
This is a game changer. Francis is right - all one needs to do is point and print! I say we do not visit a single parish without printing up a sample (with the address to find more) from this and handing it to the choir director. There is no longer ANY excuse not to do chant!!
When the Copley Place mall was built next to Boston's Back Bay shopping district, it was said to be the last nail in the coffin of small-scale, locally-based retail shopping. It proved to be exactly the opposite: people who never previously shopped on Boston's Newbury Street came for Neiman Marcus and stayed for the local boutiques. Why wouldn't a Tiffany & Co. store replacing an expressway cloverleaf be a pleasant thing? Why wouldn't a crucial liturgical book further the cause and the material support of church music?
The timing of this release could not have been more perfect. We are just now putting together a schola to sing the Introit, Offertory, and Communion for the First Sunday of Lent. Our choir has used the Graduale Simplex before, but this is their first time with the real thing. Thank you, and please pray for us!
The permissions for the English are a bit mucky. On propers etc. there is no problem in using them but it's a good to provide an attribution. The Mass is from ICEL so there are the usual issues there.
The greatest thing about this is that it puts the 1970 Missal directly in touch with the liturgical ideal, right there in print, with easy to follow rubrics and facing translations. As Gavin said, there's no excuse not to do what the Second Vatican Council says to do: give sacred chant pride of place, make it easy for the congregation to participate, etc.
If this Missal were in every pew in the country, the benefits would be incalculable.
And of course, the challenge would be clear: teach!
Let's put it this way: I wouldn't complain. The PBC is definitely the ideal pew edition. What I'm thinking is that the Greg Missal, like the PBC, pulls everything together. With either one, you can see the coherence of the Mass and its tapestry-like elaboration over the course of the liturgical year. That impression is extremely powerful, whatever its source. That's what I'm referring to. It shows clearly how the commercialized, ad hoc approach is simply... bizarre.
I will never forget the first time I saw the Gregorian Missal. It was a revelation. A shock. A relief. Coherence arrived. I understood, probably for the first time. It put it all together for me.
I think it is wonderful. I am going to try the download again today. Last night, Earthlink stopped in the middle of the download, then the musicasacra site was unreachable for several hours. I thought all the downloads had crashed another server somewhere.
By the way, can a few more users (in addition to Jeffrey) give some indication of whether the links I posted above are working for them?
They're working fine for me, with two machines on different ISPs, but if most people don't have success using them, I should edit the posts above and take them out to avoid any difficulty.
Ok, so here is my trick. I buried the link at the bottom of a long and boring post with the most boring headline in human history: English Propers in the Usus Antiquior?
I don't know... I found the entire article very interesting... definitely not boring enough to dissuade readers, Jeffrey :)
That being said... I hope the server doesn't get overloaded! I've already downloaded an saved it, so I'll not be adding to the traffic... Thanks so much!
so far we are just fine. A slow roll out is working. We have no problem over the long term. It is the simultaneous connections that cause problems. Like 250 simultaneous hits will crash it, I think.
Technically, BitTorrent (or any of the other compatible file-sharing programs) would work fine, but I'm guessing that most parish musicians aren't familiar with them.
Besides, in many home networks, the user would have to configure a DSL/cable modem, a LAN router, or both to open up the necessary "ports" to make the download process work.
I got it from Chonak's second link in less than a minute. Awesome. (I run Linux, btw. I seem to remember someone saying Windows might have trouble with that link.)
These people who say that this makes everything make sense now, can y'all please explain this to me? I've only briefly looked through it. I just want to know what you guys mean when you say stuff like that.
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