Curiously enough, Mr Inwood, as an organist, is a remarkably sensitive accompanist of chant.*
*Whether or not you think it should be accompanied is another matter.

The New Translation not infrequently aspires to the heights of Vogon poetry.
I’m interested, as a priest who likes music, that here in the UK publishers don’t seem remotely interested in marketing hymnals or missal-hymnals of any sort to me.

On the rare occasion they show up here, I toss them straight in the bin.

The spanish version is just as bad, too.

A few years ago, GIA was telling us we have to be sure to include music written by people of color. Why? Because they are people of color. Nothing about the quality of the music or the appropriateness of it for Mass. What happened to using something if it's good (regardless of composer) and not using it if it isn't?

It's all about trying to please people (an impossible task) and not God.

These days I only read their publication for laughs.

I'm sure Inwood did extensive interviews and polling of "diverse" people to discern their preferences, right? Right?

His setting of the Exsultet does not hold a candle (made of bees) to the authentic chant.

So is beige.

Serviam

Exactly

And yet, as a young, white man, I will be accused of being “racist” for wanting to schedule something by Bach instead of some pink-haired modernist who fancies themselves the successor to Webern. *heavy sigh*. (I just don’t care.)

Racist? As W.C. Fields once noted, "I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally."

…despite no changes to the contents in over 30 years.

I have long joked at church that we paid for Alstott’s lake house, since our parish (under my predecessor) dutifully bought his psalms repeatedly for years.

Don't try rhetorical tricks with parishioners. It may be tempting, but never comes off successfully, because seals an interaction as bilaterally adversarial.

This article does a good job of explaining principles of Catholic liturgical music without being long to read. I recommend it to people who question me:

http://wcucatholic.org/some-thoughts-on-liturgical-music/

The elegant truth of this article contrasts starkly with Inwood's article.

The article overlooks the two things: First, nothing in Sacrosanctum Consilium or the GIRM mentions Latin being a prerequisite for chant. Strangely, even Mr. Inwood, at the end of his article, discusses singing Pange Lingua to an English text but using the Gregorian melody. Second, Sacrosanctum Concilium specifically specifically calls for the laity being able to sing or say those parts of the mass which belong to them in Latin. That cannot happen unless massses are routinely said in enough Latin that the people can learn their parts.

My nickname for "GIA Quarterly" and OCP's "Today's Liturgy" are the same --- the Sunday Comics.
BMP

I'm not very concerned with the content in the GIA Quarterly; I'm more interested in GIA's current output.

I go to their "choral readings" most years, as it's the best way for me to visit with area music directors whom I know. It's great to see everyone, but the choral music has gotten increasingly frustrating. To my ear, it's just gotten really, really bland.

They have good composers in tow (Michael John Trotta is excellent, IMO -- his setting of O Magnum Mysterium is sublime), but they seem to focus less on that. It's too bad.

And Gather 4 is, indeed, a mess. The post-He Who Shall Not Be Named era hasn't been kind to GIA at all.

.

again... As long as the N.O. with its nebulous rubrics are employed, the infamous Alius Cantus Aptus will allow anywho to program anywhat at anytime, anywhere for anycause.

GIA is a private company, owned by non-Catholics. OCP is a non-profit company under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon.

Cardinal Cupich can't order GIA to do anything. Archbishop Sample could throw his weight around OCP to change direction, but if he hasn't yet (10 years after arriving), he's not going to.

I have a friend on the inside who has told me that the music side of the two publishers is not profitable and music sales have fallen considerably over the past ten years. OCP's bread and butter is its missalette sales, not its music, and wedding its music to its missalettes keeps parishes in the OCP musical ecosystem as long as they buy OCP's missalettes. Competition from the Ignatius Pew Missal and Source & Summit's missalette product is starting to erode OCP's market share. GIA has other divisions besides sacred music.

OCP and GIA benefit largely from inertia and laziness among parishes and music directors. Changing to a new missalette/hymnal is a parish culture-changing decision that requires a lot of effort to implement. It's much easier to continue using the same old, same old.

I don't hear much anymore about the Diocese of Marquette, which went in the direction of imposing a diocesan hymnal. I wonder how that is going.

It will take bishops encouraging parishes to go in a different direction and setting an example, as Bishop Kemme of Wichita has done. Reduce demand for OCP's and GIA's products, which would force them to adapt to a new market.

But, really, so much is available for free that is underused.

When the revised responsorial psalms and Lectionary are approved and promulgated in ??? years, a parish could purchase a hardbound, permanent pew missal, eliminating annual purchases of disposable missalettes. A hardbound hymnal with lots of public domain songs or weekly handouts with sung propers could supply the music for the assembly.

Or maybe the content of Mass texts and music will all be delivered to people's phones in the years ahead.

... "celebrations led by piano, guitar, or contemporary ensemble"???
Over here, even in the most 'progressive' krings the worship leader is synonymous for the celebrating priest, while the combo & youth (=we still feel young) choir is 'serving' the celebration rather than 'leading' it... and for that matter, our pianist is serving the choir rather than leading it (the latter is my task, at least that's what I'm paid for).

Known in academic circles now as Antonio Alonso

lol I do this too!

I think that even OneLicense is feeling heat from S&S. I know they were not too kind to one secretary when she informed OL that the church was transitioning to S&S. They even threatened legal action if every livestream they’d ever done was not pulled down.

During the hymn selection process, Bishop Doerfler of Marquette requested hymn submissions from all the music directors and asked the hymnal committee to accept as many of them as possible. Several were rejected - for example, "Let There Be Peace On Earth" which is arguably not a sacred song at all - but most were. So the musicians around the diocese were given a say in the contents. Not everyone took advantage of the invitation.

The restriction to the hymnal applies to congregational hymns only, not to liturgical texts or choral motets. The diocese invites music directors who wish to use a hymn not in the book to submit it to the Office of Worship to approve it for use, to ensure that the text is doctrinally sound. As far as I am aware, the musicians are complying with the decrees. Not universally happily, but complying.

This seemed apropos to the discussion. Robert Conquest’s third law:

“The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”

The same issue of GIA Quarterly had an article that asserted -- I'm not kidding -- Communion is an excellent time to sing music that reflects the community's ethnicity.

And:

Did not know they fired a composer because of BLM/arson opposition.

Me either. Frankly, both of these items should be printed up on leaflets, loaded onto C-17 Globemasters, and dropped on every parish in the country. If you're still using GIA after that I don't know what.