Our schola performs with that type of choirbook manuscript. It works quite well as I use a pointer to where they are singing. It is fantastic for introducing rubato and accents that would be very difficult to do in directing. I highly recommend it to everyone. I use the digital version of the gregorian missal and simply print it on tabloid size paper at 200% or so. I will post the PDFs if you are interested in them.

I emailed Scott Turkington and Jeffrey Tucker earlier in the year asking if they knew of a very large copy of a chant hymnal, but they couldn't think of anything.

I'd like to just order them as we need them and maybe eventually have them bound into volumes. Maybe create one for Advent which would include the ordinaries and other Advent chants. Another for Christmas, and so on.

This is a great idea, one that's fermenting in my mind.

Ostrowski: Your family's other talents put to use here?

A slight aside. When I took Theodore Marier's chant class in 1996, part of the daily homework was to copy out chants from the Liber Cantualis. We used 4-line music manuscript books and felt-tip calligraphy pens. Marier's comment: When you learn any other language, you don't learn to read only, do you? No, you learn to read and write at the same time, so that's what we'll do with chant notation.

Sure, it was extra work, but it gave a certain familiarity with the notation that reading only wouldn't give.

A simple question then... If people are sharing the same copy, then they can't scribble their own little notes and reminders and cues and such. Is that a problem?

Carl:

With our schola they also have a personal copy that they mark up and refer to during rehearsals and are able to take home. For the actual performance during liturgy we only use the board and as Jeff has eluded, it makes a big difference in a unified voice.

Can anyone talk about the practical details (e.g., dimensions, printing methods)? Perhaps post photos?

I can't imagine using this myself. I see more negatives than positives. It might have worked in the old days because that was all that was possible.

What happens, for example, if you, as a conductor, decide that something should be sung with a slightly different emphasis next year (assuming we're working on Sunday propers). You make a new copy? Or are these are wipe off copies? What if you change your mind about something out of necessity - because you need to adapt some breath mark or draw a little goofy picture as a memory device. Again, just wipe them away? A corollary - a choir member's putting his own scribblings on his own page should make him responsible for executing the line correctly. Everyone has a different way.

A large copy and a small personal copy seems redundant. And most volunteer choir members don't study their music at home anyway.

A final drawback, also mentioned above. Many wouldn't be able to see it. Also, it might obscure one's view during liturgy - and I'm not saying this because I'm worried that a choir member needs to "feel" that he is part of the congregation - it may obscure your own view of what you need to be paying attention to the action at hand. Depends on the choir's position in the church, or course. Granted, proper positioning of the thing could nullify this objection.

And if your pastor sees you using this, he might suggest a Jumbo Tron for the congregation.

I think this is effective, and I'd use it only for practice. Once you practice together with this big music with everyone's focus on it, the advantage will be still there even when you sing from the book in the Mass.
I'll ask schola put the same markings in their own book, with the pencil.
The solution for wiping off markings and changes, how about put a firm clear plastic cover over the music? The pastic is attached to the board, and each music can be placed underneath. And once in a while change the plastic, when it's time?
For people who cannot see well have to simply sit in the front, or just use the book, but eveyone else can still get the benefits of using it.

I'd like to learn how to make this 'big music.'

I use a board for the children, although only the words I write on it for them. (I marked accents, underline the syllables for more than one note/syllable - or sometimes have them find those while listening to the chant, etc)
It really helps for the focus and singing details. Once they learn the words from the board and the melody by rote, I have them look at the music in their book and have them sing from it. Most of all, I think it helps developing habits of good singing posture and focusing.

The thing I'd like my schola to overcome is simply sight-reading every chant. Half of the schola members sang chant "the first time around" (before it was largely banished from Catholic repertoire), and know all of the chant by heart. Many of the chants we have sung (Quasi modo, Victimae Paschali, Ave Verum Corpus, etc) have stuck with our schola. I conduct it a certain way and the schola members have learned it that way. If they join another schola, they'll have to learn how to follow that director instead of everyone following the conductor in their heads with their noses buried in their chant books. How is a conductor to compete when the schola members bury their heads in the chant books?

This is my solution. Large chant pieces (like the image above) where the schola sees both the music and the conductor at the same time. God forbid anyone ever learn any part of the music by heart through repetition.