Hello all,

I'm sure that some of the questions I'm about to ask are old and have been addressed many times in this space before, but I'm going to post here anyway. I've just been hired as music director for one of the historic California missions, in Ventura, CA. We've been using the Ignatius Pew Missal as our hymnal for a couple years now, and while it's a huge improvement in terms of quality and orthodoxy over what came before, it also has a rather limited selection in a few key respects, which I will list here:

1) "Contemporary" music. My pastor brought this up to me because, bless his heart, he misses a lot of the contemporary music that was lost when my predecessor switched to the more traditional repertoire contained in the Pew Missal. He named the music from the St. Louis Jesuits as something he'd like to hear more of, but which isn't contained in our current missal. I'm not particularly fond of the Louis Jesuits or about many "contemporary" hymns, i.e. those contained in the OCP or other common hymnals. But I'm willing to be flexible and at least have some diverse material at my fingertips.

2) Even as regards more "traditional" hymns, the Pew Missal also has a rather limited selection, requiring me to repeat hymns often during the year -- not the worst solution, of course, but I'd like more options. I already find myself having to supplement from other sources.

3) Spanish music. Here in Southern California, at one of the historic Spanish missions, it is no surprise that we have a large Hispanic population, who have their own Spanish masses every week. Currently, we use the OCP's Flor y Canto, which has a large selection, but much of it is very contemporary, some of it a bit goofy, so I wonder if there are other options with more traditional Hispanic music. Is there anything better than Flor y Canto?

My biggest question is whether there is some hymnal with a large selection of "traditional" music (with pretty choral arrangements and elegant and orthodox translations) that could also satisfy the needs and preferences of some parishes and pastors who still like the more "contemporary" stuff. Some parishes that I know use the Pew Missal but supplement it with an actual hymnal (such as Worship, or something else), since the Pew is really more of a missal with some hymns in the back. But with the addition of a Spanish hymnal, I foresee that this could really clutter up the pews in a church with a lot of books.

Any thoughts are welcome!

Jonathan Culbreath