That is what I assumed this project was out to mine, but in the end I suspect this really will be an eclectic hymnal with a conservative bent.

I'm also curious about the origin of Immaculate Mary. I'm guessing 19th century.

Yes, and please provide the Official Certificate of Religious Purity and Freedom from Non-Catholic Taint for each of those 250 hymns. I simply could not buy a hymnal without that official stamp of approval.

I've been meaning to recommend this book: http://www.archive.org/stream/earlylatinhymnsw00walpiala/earlylatinhymnsw00walpiala_djvu.txt

Chant & metrical are not mutually exclusive terms.

OTOH, I was conducting At the Name of Jesus (King's Weston) not long ago and all I could think was, "This tune is impious. No religious content whatsoever." Fortunately the Colloquium was only a week later.

Yurodovi:

Just send me a SASE and I will provide you with the proper certificate. I promise!

If you want to combine a dislike for his particular hymn AND a standing disenchantment with unfettered cantors you should look up "Omazing Grace" on YouTube. (Yes that's an "O", I just can't bear to post the link. Be sure you've waited at least 60 minutes since eating.)

I had thought that the central goal of this project was getting a high quality collection of english hymns into the public domain and so, since the lyrics are generally in the public domain, the main issue was the TUNES rather than the lyrics. However, the discussion has suggested otherwise.

A collection for use in Appalachia (the part of the US that I care about) would have to include New Britain under any criteria that would seem rational to me. Granted, I may not be very rational.

While on the topic of tunes, I wish there was a hymnal with the tunes for every hymn in the liturgy of the hours.

I'm also curious about the origin of Immaculate Mary. I'm guessing 19th century.

Sorry, why would that be an issue? Most of English-language Catholicism dates from about that time as well.

Re: the hymnal contents --

I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can only consult the group mind so long, and then you just have to make an executive decision. If you're really worried, do like the ancient Hebrews and cast lots. :)

Re: "New Britain" --

The way it's written in some of the modern Catholic hymnals is not the way anybody else in the history of creation has written it down. You were probably trying to play it the way people really do play and sing it. :)

Re: "Waly, Waly" --

Some of the differences between hymn tune and folk tune are inevitable. For one, you have to pick one single tune out of the zillions of variants and declare it to be _the_ "Waly, Waly". :) Also, you can't vary the tune to fit slightly different verse scansion in every verse, or else you will drive everyone crazy. (Learning a song orally and writing one out under a score are totally different worlds.)

However, every tune for "Waly, Waly" tends to be fairly complicated. The basic structure might be simple, but nobody sings it that way. The hymn tune chops out pretty much every note of interest.

Another major difference is that "Waly, Waly" does not really cut up the scansion of the verses in a pattern that the hymnal version is designed for. Here's how you really sing "Waly, Waly":

It's waly, waly, down the banks (breath)
And waly, waly, down the brae (breath)
And waly, waly, yon burnside, where my love and I (finally a breath)
Were wont to gae.

The water is wide, I cannot get o'er, (breath)
And neither have I wings to fly (breath)
But give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row (finally a breath)
My love and I.

Now, that's not the way you'll see those verses written as poetry, but pretty much every traditional ballad singer sings them that way -- except the ones that leave out the third breath, and only stop at the end of the verse:

But give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall
Row, my,
love a-and I.

That third line's more or less the exciting bit of the ballad, when the verse gets all worked up into either a faster run, or where the singer draws it out even more, before hitting the last line climax. There's a lot stronger pulse to it, too. I'm fairly sure that time signatures change, the way lots of people sing it, or at least that they stretch quite a lot!

The hymn tune has no idea of any of this, and just pounds along more or less the same tempo and the same emphases all the way. Which is necessary to a certain extent, but... I think they really pounded it past meek submission and all the way to "dead horse".

Also, there's a lot less ornamentation in the hymn tune. A lot, lot less. "Waly, Waly" is a paradise for low-key ornamentation, and you ornament or vary it however you feel will complement the particular verse best, or whatever you like to do to it. But you don't ever sing it really plainly. When you've got a song that runs to ten or fifteen verses, you really like ornamentation! (Even if you're just singing it to yourself.) Naturally, any hymn that's going to be sung by a choir can only afford to have the ornamentation built into the choir arrangement. But... most hymnals these days tend to skimp on ornamentation severely for any Celtic tune, and when they throw any in, it's usually not very Celtic-sounding. It makes me sad.

I'm probably being very mean and nasty and unfair in my take on this, but it's hard to see why composers would want to take a slithery, sobbing little tune like "Waly, Waly" and turn it into something boxy. (And of course, the American versions of the ballad, that get called "The Water Is Wide", do tend to be a little more regularized. And then there's Benjamin Britten and other classical arrangements. But still, it's very strange.)

OTOH, although I find it disconcerting to have it turned into a march and be turned into a regularized hymn, the arrangement of "Star of the County Down" used for Cooney's Magnificat is sensible enough. I'm not sitting there wondering what was in the man's mind and how much crack was required to put it there.

CharlesW,
yes, i've found facebook & web .. since i had to work today and was on call last week, i'm thinking of taking a little roadtrip down to Holy Ghost this weekend

tdunbar--

Looks as though our upcoming CMAA get-together will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, in the Chancery offices in Knoxville. (I will e-mail you the details.) It's just a mixer--a chance for us to talk about what we're doing in our parishes and groups. And to plot, I mean, plan for the future.

In the spring we hope to bring JT and AOZ for a weekend chant workshop.

If anyone else wants to pop in, please e-mail me--marymezzo at gmail.com.

Charles and Mary,
yes, since it's a fair drive I figure i'll make a day of it, ie come to a morning mass (will try to make it to the 10am one) and then stay for the 1:30pm EF mass.
see you'll then
thomas

ps: sorry that i can't make the Sept 19th meeting..i've a prior commitment then.

Oh, I have always loved that poem. Never thought of attaching it to New Britain. Years ago there was a setting by ....Richard Dirksen, maybe? Can't remember. It reposes somewhere in my moldering library of octavos I will never use or sing again, but can't bring myself to throw away.

Donna

Luckily that little treasure of an alt. is under copyright

How interesting that this seems to be a developing pattern. Providential?

'Land of Rest' is also a good tune for the St. Robert Southwell poem !

We have recently started singing a memorial acclamation to the tune of Amazing Grace.
It doesn't seem to bother most people as, being French, they don't have an knowledge of the original but I find it really off-putting, especially as I've never really been a fan of this hymn.

A quick google shows multiple instances of this hymn online, nicely laid out in SATB. This is not a hymn that must be set free into the public domain. With so many objections, why include it in the PBEH?

Amazing Grace is very simple, actually, in that it seeks not to make an intricate and loaded theological statement, but is a recounting of a Damascus Road sort of moment. To postulate any further about theological abstractions is to miss the point. Further, if you look in some of the old books like the Sacred Harp, or especially, the Southern Harmony, there are a couple of excellent verses that are very appropriate for funerals, but are not usually sung anymore.
I would also advocate for a conventionally singable version of this tune based on the shaped-note versions and not on the cleaned-up versions we usually see and hear today at church.

I don't like the song. Including it with a disclaimer, part of the plan, is better then excluding it.

The more that is excluded that people want to sing, the more chance that they will not get the good stuff with the less than stellar.

They will be able to read and learn about each hymn. And see a "catholicity rating."

Leave it out. If this is a Catholic hymnal, some consideration should be made to leave out hymns (songs) that are so protestant in spirit (while not precisely heretical) that it's noticeable.

Michael, while I agree, this has nothing to do with PBEH...it's an outside project of healing.

Maybe you can offer to include it next time there's an ecumenical prayer service at your parish, but not at Mass.

I find that it is rarely sung here in Canada, with the exception of funerals. Then EVERYONE wants it. (The CBW changed the lyrics..... They didn't like the word "wretched".)

I refuse to sing it. Period.

"I would rather excise it from Catholic hymnals, along with Pescador de Hombres. What is just as worse is hearing AG in Spanish."

Or even worse - Pescador de Hombres sung in English.