I mentioned this on YouTube too, but it bears repeating and discussion here (and I'm happy to be proven wrong!) but it appears that there are not translations for offerings that are exclusively in Latin. I think this is a huge hindrance to its adoption in a normal parish setting. I do my best to point people toward traditional music (and I've already ordered a copy of this hymnal for more comprehensive review and reference) but I doubt I could get the powers-that-be to agree to purchasing an expensive permanent resource that did not include translations for the copious latin options. Te Sæculorum Principem, for instance, has a ton of white space on the second page and no translation (that I can see, unless it's on the next page). I could not tell my congregation to turn to that page and attempt to chant the hymn without a translation being supplemented in a worship aid. Perhaps this wasn't intended for the congregation anyway, but the point still stands. If we want to make this music accessible to people, they have to know what it actually says.

I do understand what you are saying, but we thought about this carefully, and here are some points to think about in return.

1. This hymnal was definitely developed with TLM congregations in mind, ALTHOUGH it could be used by a conservative Novus Ordo community. In the TLM world, Latin doesn't trigger people in the same way, and we see a fair number of these Latin hymns on a regular basis.

2. There are a limited number of Latin-only chants as compared with the very large selection of English hymns, so this may not be a make-or-break problem, depending on the uses to which the hymnal will be most commonly put.

3. Some of the Latin pieces have translations while others do not. Adding translations for all of them would have made even larger a hymnal that is already pushing the limit of what is practical for a single book. And most of the pages don't have that extra white space that you noticed.

4. If a parish is larger enough to use worship aids, or has the custom of publishing information in Sunday bulletins, a translation could easily enough be provided there on a given week when a certain Latin hymn is to be sung.

Thanks for your comment and your interest!

As to 3, yeah. But there are so many hymns… and I agree with Serviam.

A quick glance reveals two glaring typesetting problems on the sample pages: the abbreviation rit. inexplicably spaced out onto two lines, ri / t., and text offsetting in each stanza of "Te saeculorum Principem" after the half bar as well as the very first note. I would like to see more traditional stylistic choices in a "traditional" hymnal: slurs between quarter notes sung to the same syllable, syllabic beaming for eighth notes, alto stems down and tenor stems up instead of everything formatted piano-style, and reverential capitalization. I question the use of normal bar lines at broken bars. Why were serial commas used in the text but not the title of "All Glory, Laud, and Honor"? It is very difficult to proofread one's one work, but surely for a book with a $30 price tag and mostly public domain content, someone could have been hired to do the job well.

alto stems down and tenor stems up instead of everything formatted piano-style

Ouch.

I question the use of normal bar lines at broken bars.

@FSSPmusic do you mean in “All Glory, Laud, and Honor”, at the end of lines, or somewhere else?

Anyway, this would kill two birds with one stone for us, for 95% of our needs, but the engraving things to me that Patrick addresses are errors; I also wonder how it’s possible to do the chant like that, with the lowest note offset like that.

Does it make sense, from the perspective of a regular parish, to have 11 settings of the Creed

This is why the index is needed. If it’s the Solesmes seven plus Dumont, that gets us to nine, I think. That’s understandable if perhaps unrealistic, but that leaves us with yet two more.

Well. There are certainly things that I consider errors now that you mention them, as the standard is pretty fixed. But deviating in a way that’s really in the minority is, well, a choice. (The stems actually would drive me bonkers; it’s occasionally not clear what note is for tenors otherwise.)

ServiamScores:

I can imagine some NOM communities, very "high church," wanting to use this, so Os Justi Press won't brand it as TLM-only. But I think no one will buy 500 copies without looking at an evaluation copy, and it's at that point that they'll have to judge whether it'll work for their specific needs or not.

People can pick nits all day long, since there's a dozen ways to skin a cat. The use of a piano reduction for some of the harmonizations is a reflection of the fact that the hymnal also has organists in mind (no separate organ edition is planned at this time); nevertheless, any singer capable of reading music could easily sing his part from that. As for accents on two-syllable Latin words, this is hardly a "make or break" issue. Basically, if someone wants a hymnal with a deluxe selection of chant and hymnody, this is the new leader in the pack, regardless of whether or not it checks off everyone's favorite box. And $30 for a 900-page hardcover like this is a good deal, if anyone knows about the costs of printing these days.

but it’s somewhat better to make a singer’s edition with harmonizations that the organist can play from, rather than an organ edition to sing from.)

As a trained organist, absolutely. Organists who cannot read from such...

In all fairness, this book is probably someone’s basement office project over the last 10 years. So much of it looks good that it’s a shame they made decisions that keep it from being A+ professional. I love that there is one edition, with the choral parts in it by default.
Like the Adoremus Hymnal: it’s got some good stuff, but the engraving and layout are amateurish. Source and Summit is pretty professional looking, except for the refusal to use Solesmes signs on chant notation and the ragged final systems when you print off hymns. Ignatius Pew Missal was pretty good, actually, with engraving and formatting.

in my opinion the 1940 is a premier model for standards to engrave a hymnal

That, and the 1958 Service Book and Hymnal of the Lutheran Church in America, although I'm not a fan of the omission of time signatures. As far as Catholic hymnals go, the ICEL Resource Collection is handsomely laid out.

more than four versus being put inside a grand staff

If people aren't familiar enough with their line by the fifth stanza, it's rather hopeless. But please format the remaining text with the proper indentations for poetry!

One may dismiss all of this as nitpicking, but our publishers really need to do better. We're woefully behind most of the Protestant publishing houses. Books intended for use in divine worship need to be thoroughly proofread before being marketed for bulk sales.

Yes. Even small publishers can reach a similar standard though, if they are willing to take the necessary time. It just becomes exponentially more tedious the larger your project is and the higher your standards are. I say this from personal experience. I could make a top-notch music book just using free software (LaTeX, MuseScore, Scribus) but it is really a question of time and energy, which is almost always required in greater quantities than one imagines. And so if you don't have a paid team of professionals, then it is hundreds of hours of your own time.

Also, I feel like this conversation is a radically different one than talking about the dumpster fire that the Adoremus Hymnal was... That was distractingly horrible....again, another camp entirely.

AnimaVocis, I think you are on the mark. I find myself rather sympathetic to Michael Matt's (of The Remnant) clarion call to "unite the clans" by which he means, the bickering among trads is really detrimental, and we would all be better off by working (broadly speaking) toward similar goals, rather than fighting the world AND infighting other trads at the same time. I think that is what you're driving at here too. Best be happy about a new traditional hymnal that will serve congregations well wherever it is deployed, rather than endlessly hashing whatever faults it may have. Whatever those faults may be, its merits far outweigh them—merits which also tend to far outweigh other options on the market. I'm sorry if my initial remark served as a catalyst for a pile on. (Although, to be fair, proofs of this hymnal were shared here for feedback, so it's not entirely unreasonable to further discuss the topic on this forum, in particular.)

Some of the comments have clearly struck a nerve, when valid critique of editorial decisions is dismissed as nitpicking, bickering, infighting, making the ideal the enemy of the good, etc. We need publications with the highest editorial standards that will last for decades, not books that will be in print for just a few years, only to be discontinued or revised into incompatible editions. There are conservative Anglican and Lutheran churches still using hymnals from the 40s, which remain in print today because they're top-notch publications. The closest analogy we have is the St. Gregory, but it's a far cry. There are a number of reasons why the 1905 Kyriale isn't universally known and loved—neither today nor in 1962, 1965, or 1969—but that's another discussion. Catholic publishers, can we get something that's going to have an enduring legacy instead of lasting a generation or less?

@FSSPmusic

Amen and amen. I echo your sentiment. Let us all continue to strive to uphold and promote every good work and better it to every degree possible.

Let anyone who has attempted to produce a hymnal on this scale be the first to cast a stone.
We are making some edits to correct additional typos

Professor, if I were attempting to produce such a hymnal and still making edits, I would express appreciation for the constructive criticism instead of dismissing it as nitpicking, stone casting, and a circular firing squad. I am, in fact, in the midst of a major production myself, which will probably be in the neighborhood of 500 pages when complete. Although my work is intended for trained cantors rather than congregational singing, I strive to solicit as much feedback from as many prospective users as possible. I say let those to whom this book is being marketed cast all the stones they want!

Dr. K,
I fully respect and appreciate that it is difficult to deal with criticisms for a long labor of love. But the presupposition of your "circular firing squad" remark is that any criticism arises out of malice, and not love, which is certainly not the case for me, at the very least. You may take or leave what I am about to say, however suffice to say, I have gone deep into the weeds with hymn engraving the last 6 years and I feel it proper to respond thoroughly in light of your remark, as a proof that criticisms are neither flippant nor unwarranted.

I am going to present my thoughts on this hymnal in as charitable a light as possible because I so highly respect the work that you do, and because I think this is a laudable project writ large. With that stated, it is also very fair to observe that this hymnal was not at all prepared for primetime, and was well below the standards I've come to expect from someone of your caliber both as a frequently-published author and a professional musician yourself.

Here are some of the inconsistencies that I've observed:

• some pieces have translations, others do not. The claim that there was no room for translations is clearly false, since they were fitted in wherever it suited the editor, but not other places.
• fonts are mismatched throughout the book. Chants use huge fonts, while hymns are tiny and almost unreadable for anyone with older eyes.
• many chants are missing mode annotations, which is surprising, not because they are truly necessary, but since they are typically included, but are randomly omitted.
• many hymns are missing proper attribution such as hymn tune name or author or translator. This is a very basic "must" for hymnals, and, frankly, an embarrassing oversight. (Another example: 149 is marked as "based upon" but no name for the adaptor.)
• some latin/english hymns face each other, while others do not. But when they do, they don't actually properly mirror each other. For instance, 147-148, the system breaks are different. The latin edition also exhibits an issue present elsewhere in multiple instances, where bit of a refrain are orphaned when they need not be. "Gaude" should have been bumped down t the next line.
• odd editing choices were made with text blocks on these pages as well... Why are the latin verses at the bottom misaligned? And then when the same approach is mirrored on the facing page, they are mirrored in a different order: one the left 4&6 are high, on the right, 4&5 are high. It's just sloppy.
• there are multiple instances throughout the hymnal where the editor(s) could not agree on common terms and contractions. For instance, p. 159 has "Trns." for translator. On the facing page, "Tr. Edward Caswall". Is it Tr. or Trns.? Pick one. Similar little discrepancies exist for other things like as well such as when you have "Hymn 1" and "Hymn 2." (period) on the same page. (267)
• a not-infrequent issue is that verse numbers do not properly align with themselves even on the same stave (160). I don't even know how this is possible, since alignment is handled by default by most notation programs.
• default stem length is far too long, which is one of the contributing factors to the almost incalculable number of collisions. The number of collisions deserves a separate discussion unto itself, but suffice to say, this issue alone makes this hymnal not ready for prime-time.
• Why does the occasional hymn tune have the meter indicated, while the overwhelming majority don't? (159 - "TRURO LM")
• Lines of poetry are often split apart and the stave breaks occur at very odd places. It is common practice in hymnal design to keep phrases of text together wherever possible, and staves break mid-measure for textual clarity. This is almost universally ignored, and makes for very awkward reading. 166 is a great example of this, where the second line "The watchmen... crying" could have very easily been on a single line to keep that phrase in tact. There is plenty of space to accommodate this. It's even worse in 250 where you have two 8th notes as a pickup to a page turn. They would have been much better off on the next page.
• in the overwhelming majority of cases, 2 page hymns do not lay open on spreads, but require page turns. (again, see 166 or 250) No, no, no. Merely shifting a neighboring 1-page hymn forward or backward one in the order could have saved so, so many hymns from this fate. It is honestly wild to me that this was not considered as a primary concern when laying out the order of the hymnal.
• wherever dynamics are present, they very often cause graphical problems and collisions. 181-182 (There also seems to be errata on 182-- that marking should likely say "Ped" not "Man". I would also suggest an alternate font to make such markings jump out to the eye, rather than using the same (albeit slightly tinier) font as the lyrics.). Another difficult case is 433-34. Collisions galore, and they are not aligned in any way.
• refrain texts often are not centered in staves as is standard practice. Speaking of refrains, 1.2. & 3. for the refrain of Hark the Herald? odd marking. As is the "org." (italics with a period, different from the "Man" marking a few pages earlier) below the cue-sized notes.) But the question then remains: what is the house-style of this hymnal? Are you marking refrains with verse numbers or not? (they hardly seem necessary)
• "Amen" on v2 of 163, but v5 of 253. Shouldn't this, as a standard, be on the bottom line for all hymns?
• use of divider lines is not standardized. For instance, you use them to divide english and latin (180 Puer Natus) but then do not use them to divide english and german (203 Silent Night). They also do not divide latin and english in Quem Pastores on 227.
• On a similar note, sometimes you also use regular vs. italic fonts, but not always, for different languages.
• 206 Coventry Carol has no verse numbers at all.
• sometimes you employ syllabic beaming (237 Divinum Mysterium) but other times you do not (387 Christus Vincit). Again, I come back to the question: what is the house style? It seems a grab bag and there is no consistency.
• 241 In the Bleak Midwinter is missing notes. seriously. There is no pickup for "Our" in V2 (with or without parentheses as are sometimes used) nor for "A" on the 3rd stave and V2 & 4 at the end of the 3rd stave. You also have lyric extender lines going into rests. There are ties colliding with rhythm dots. There is so much going on here.
• A few select pages get red text indicators. What makes some of these cases more special than others? Also, they often collide which is painfully apparent when they are printed in red... (265).
• Speaking of red... why not R/ V/ in red? And why are some asterisks in Red, but not others, sometimes on the same page? (v1, 272, same on the following pages)
• The idiosyncratic nature of selectively bumping particular syllables down out of alignment with the rest of the word is baffling to me. 271 & 639, for example, are very odd to read. I've never seen this anywhere else, and seems to work against, rather in favor of this style.
O CRUX Á____SPES...
__________VE
Please correct this. Just nudge the entire line down a little. Again, common practice.

I am going to refrain from discussing whether or not this wants to be a hymnal or a choir supplement (the inclusion of motets would seem to favor the latter interpretation) but suffice to say, as laudable as a first effort is concerned, this never should have made it to print in this condition. I am more than willing (this is a serious offer) to go through with an even finer-toothed comb and help annotate errata and collisions if such a service would be desired and appreciated.

As with many other efforts out there, I'm happy to see other people who are "on the team" having their successes wherever they can be had. But there is simply no way I could recommend purchasing these books at cost to anyone in their present condition. I pray that the requisite changes are able to be made so that this is truly a successful and beautiful book worth having.

As a closing thought, you mentioned in an earlier reply to me that this was a hymnal for trad communities. I feel it a bit of a pity that you're willing to pigeonhole the hymnal to only that group, as there are trad-leaning parishes that would welcome such a resource (and certainly MD's who wish to shepherd their congregations in that direction) if only some accessibility features were added (read: translations, even if small, and not everywhere, but only where they can be reasonably accommodated). There are choirs who would use this book as well, even if they weren't purchased for the whole parish.

In any case, I hope you receive these notes with the charity in which they were intended. I really do want this to succeed, just as I'm happy to see the CCW hymnal in circulation. I welcome them whenever I encounter them.

Dear Dr. K,

I am one of your great defenders (and admirers and promoters) as you may know.

People post on here all the time with new comps, new layouts and new contributions to the cause of sacred music. We always put forth our honest and forthright opinions. When Jeff O. put out his hymnals, we all gave suggestions along the same lines. I think also with Adam B. I suppose this web page is the ‘iron sharpens iron’ forum.

Richard C has been a level headed moderator for years in this effort and he does not discourage our rantings and critiques unless it becomes personal, and I am so grateful to have a platform where we can speak honestly.

We thank you for your contribution to sacred music and the defense of the liturgy and are encouraged that you are able to take constructive criticism and look forward to the finished work.