The St. Gregory Hymnal is the one that most parishes used before Vat2. It's even in 4 parts!

moconnor

What's wrong with St. Gregory?

BTW the Adoremus hymnal is good, but needs expansion to cover more subjects in the hymns.

moconnor

The St. Gregory Hymnal is the predecessor of Glory & Praise. The question isn't what's wrong with the St. Gregory Hymnal as it is who ever asked Nicholas A. Montanni to write an entire hymnal? He excludes the bulk of quality western hymnody for works of his own creation or dirgy Eastern European tunes. He assumes the abysmal pre-concilliar state (5 old ladies, an old man, all led by Left-Foot-Lucy) of choral music to be the norm, and so only aggregates the bad situation instead of giving quality music in 3 or 4 parts to rise up to. The texts are frequently as shmaltzy as the music. And above all, it isn't a true hymnal, it's a collection of choral anthems. Some of them (some) are quality pieces, but you have to search hard and I think it'd be far better to get a real edition rather than one that suffers from his "editing". It's fortunate in fact that it's not a real hymnal, since I would be more loathe to impose such "music" on a congregation than to impose Gather II.

Summed up, it's the Rossini attitude: don't improve things, don't change anything. Just keep doing what you're doing and it's still technically a valid Mass.

Gavin - thank you for putting into words the misgivings I myself have had regarding the St. Gregory Hymnal, but couldn't quite express.

The Pius X Hymnal from the 1950's was probably one of the most useful for a
parish looking for quality music that didn't require a collegiate choir. I still find
things there, that I can't find easily anywhere else.

I'd also recommend the Cantus Populi, its the forerunner to Hymns, Psalms, and Spirtual Canticles, howeever it is hard to find and copies that are availble tend to be expensive. I'm not sure if an organ edition was ever made, though there was an SATB edition.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I have had much experience with the EF, but I think you have to look at your parish. Do you do Low Mass or High Mass? If its High Mass, are the propers chanted by the choir/is there supposed to be congregational participation on the propers? Is it a dialogue mass, and does the congregation sing the ordinary or does the choir do choral settings of the ordinary. If you congregation does Low Mass, then probably one of those hymnals you mentioned (Worship, Adoremus, St. Michale's) would be fine, although my two favorites of in-print hymnals would be Adoremus and Collegeville.

Now, if you're interested in doing a dialogue /high Mass, then I would maybe go for the Kyriale/Liber Cantualis, both can be had from both OCP and GIA I think. You can get an organ accompaniment from Paraclete press or Directly from Solemes for the Liber Cantualis (although on the hymns, they only give a verse or two, I'd actually reccomend getting the organ accomapniment to Laus Tibi Christe from OCP as a suppliment to that, as they give full verses).

If you were to buy the Traditional Roman Hymnal, a notice could be put on the inside that such a purchase is not necessarily an endorsement of the SSPX, but is rather made on the intrinsic merits of this hymnal, etc.

I like the St. Gregory for a number of pieces. My top two for Pre-v2 hymnals, however, would be Pius X and the New St. Basil (1958). The latter two, I think, would have served as a base for what should have happened after V2 (as opposed to what's been happening at many parishes since V2).
BMP

The Westminster Hymnal is wonderful for some of the reasons Palestrina mentions, but there is also what I consider its major drawback, at least for American congregations - the words are not written with the music for the hymns, but rather in stanzas below the music. So I can't see it being used in the pews, plus it's much more difficult to obtain than the other out-of-print hymnals that have been mentioned. (My copy is a reprint from Roman Catholic Books, but I'm assuming they do not publish it anymore since I can't find it on their website.) Still, it is a valuable resource for the music director. The Ronald Knox translations of some of the hymns all by themselves is worth the price.

Sam Schmitt

Um...
The Parish Book of Chant?

Or am I dumb for not understanding why no one has mentioned it?

I spurn the St. Gregory/ Montani hymnal, for all te reasons Gavin mentions. Plus the type-setting is so clumsy as to be unbearable.
St. Basil's 2nd ed has some great stuff in it, but needs more.

The PBC is a glorious work, but for EF parishes it has unneccessary material. Adoremus wouldn't work for the same reason, plus too many good hymns are not in it.

Since hymns constitute about 1/8 of what is sung during any given Mass at St. Anne's, they're low on my radar. However, we do want to boost Cong singing with some great hymns in a great hymnal, and so this topic is important to me.

I look forward to checking out the Traditional Roman Hymnal mentioned above.

I'm amazed at some of the virulent comments about the St. Gregory Hymnal, because there are some beautiful selections in that book.

If one doesn't like it, one should simply not use it. But I don't see a need for the angst and denigrating comments (some unfounded).

Marajoy, I was emotionally compromised...awaiting getting MRI results on my busted shoulder from colloquium...., my bad. (No surgery required, yay.)
Jeff, I don't know if you included my little descriptive about Montani as "virulent" invective or not. But according to contemporaneous documented sources, Montani was a principal voice leading the censure of certain composers' works (at least in Philadelphia) as inappropriate for worship. That's not, from me, an indictment of him, just a reported fact. Doesn't seem much different than the much more public denigrations of certain living "composers" and their works in our own time. We spend an inordinate amount of time on blogs/elsewhere wishing for their censure or debating the effects of their efforts and even their motivations. In your call for just "accentuating the positive" I am your loyal second. I still use the Gregory, used it last Sunday. But, like Joy sez, this is a forum, and the air isn't always so rarified and can get heated. Lord knows I get uncomfortable in heated climes as well.

I agree. I was only explaining my one word remark, in case you were curious as to where that came from.
While we're at it, I'll call the question: wouldn't a hymnal/missal exclusively prepared for use only at the EF be, by definition, contradictory to the aims of Summorum Pontificum? Just asking.

By lowering the pitch of hymns to "get people to sing" people are putting the range of the melody into a more comfortable range, which because it is more comfortable does not challenge the voice.

This leaves the singers unable to lead the singing, much as a pipe organ that is poorly scaled. Scaling is the decision of the width of the pipes. Möller often used small scaled principals and as a result the principal chorus was clean and clear sounding, but their was little support.

Dan Angerstein goes into these and other organs, moves each pipe over a couple of holes on the chest, makes a couple of pipes to fill in the empty holes on the bottom, does what is needed to make them play the new pitches in tune and turns the organ into a rich, full sounding instrument to support the singing.

By lowering the pitch of the hymns all of the SATB singers are singing below the place in their voices that the composer intended. Tenors love to sing Eb's. You are giving them a D, Db or a C....but even worse dropping their low notes and those of the basses out of their range.

Dropping the keys of hymns makes it impossible for the singers who sing the melody to sing it in a manner that will carry through the building as intended.


Many baritones can sing Nessum Dorma. But they do not have the characteristic timbre of a tenor. Basses, Tenors and Baritones are referred to as being voice ranges. This is silly. Any Bass can vocalize the exact same notes as a Baritone and Tenor. Bass, Tenor, Baritone and Countertenor are words used to describe the timbre of the voice.

Some people are Eflattically-challenged. You have our condolences.

I know a dramatic soprano who sang alto in college so that she could be part of the choir and sing a major soprano solo on tour. The timbre of her voice suited singing in the alto section, though her range was wide and she was a soprano, but one whose timbre would not mix well in the stratosphere.

Charles in CenCA: wouldn't a hymnal/missal exclusively prepared for use only at the EF be, by definition, contradictory to the aims of Summorum Pontificum?

Two separate points in response:

1. Rather, wouldn't it be rupturist to suggest that EF hymnals are not by definition suitable for the OF? What would need to be added or deleted to make an EF hymnal suitable for the OF?

2. As far as the "aims of Summorum Pontificum", article 10 of that document refers to personal parishes for the exclusive celebration of the EF, but no provision whatsoever is made for personal parishes for the exclusive celebration of the OF. So perhaps we should say that hymnals designed only for the OF violate the aims of SP, rather than the other way around.

But the exclusivity of the Ordinary Form is not assumed, because at any parish wherever a coetus of the faithful petition the pastor for the EF, he "should willingly accept their requests" (art. 5).

I would draw attention to this new product, in case it be of interest:



The St. Edmund Campion Missal & Hymnal for the Traditional Latin Mass
ccwatershed.org/campion



Click here to learn more.

So the last post was in 2012 and does anyone even remember what was discussed? Nothing like timeliness, I suppose. This thread is as dead as Montani. May they RIP. LOL.

BTW, I still have a stash of St. Gregory hymnals and the choir and cantors use them from time to time.

Prior to Vatican II, Catholic hymnals were the odd ducks of the hymnal world. Some congregations actually sang from them, but many rarely ever sang anything. Catholic hymnals are now more "congregation friendly," but often their content stinks. Progress - isn't it wonderful? LOL.

Concerning Montani, if I overlook the dreaded "black list" and virtually the first half of his hymnal (show of hands, people who have sung ANYTHING from the first half - be honest . . .), I think he's the goose's gizzard. Our SSPX chapel tends to use his hymnal more for an anthem book. His mass settings (especially St. Ambrose) are gorgeous though. Still, if there is a Musician's Section of Purgatory, I'd like to think Montani and RoSewig have to fulfill their obligations there by apologizing to each other.

Concerning progress - I've just started Kathleen Hughes's How Firm a Foundation. The book is basically a collection of snippets from various "movers and shakers" of the early twentieth century who were pushing for a more active congregational role in the liturgy. There are ideas put forward I'm none too keen on, but then there are others with which I am right on board.

What's depressing is how the "powers-that-be" seemed to endorse all the bad ideas (all vernacular all the time!) and forget all the good ones (involve the laity in celebrating the Divine Office!)

More and more, my experiences in the church have only reinforced my convictions that so many bad ideas get by only because it's easier to applaud a sound-bite than it is to applaud a complex systematic approach to a solution.

We use the Edmund Campion at my parish. It's a better missal than hymnal; not quite enough hymns, and some that are there are idiosyncratic (Sorry Jeff O., but with due respect to Southwell, his verse is too dense for singing.) But it's OK; you can do far worse.

The CONTENT (what songs were chosen) of TRH is very nice; we use it in our Schola. But the editing is hideous. There are many settings where the part-writing was done by somebody who seems to have flunked Harmony 101. Tragically, most of these cases were for hymns where perfectly respectable PD settings exist ("O sacred head surrounded" is a particular howler). Parallel 5ths (between outer voices yet), bad dissonance preparation, misspelled accidentals (Gb for F#). It's especially bad that the harmony is so poor, because there IS harmony for a congregation, and the price is right.

most of the mentioned hymnals are no longer in print (St. Gregory, St. Basil, Pius X, Traditional Roman - horrible musically IMO, Westminster).

The Edmond Campion is a good hymnal, but i'll go out on a limb and suggest the (now-to-be-considered-Catholic) Ordinariate's unofficial hymnal - the Hymnal 1940. Good music. Good hymns.

Drawbacks - dearth of Marian Music and unusable service music.

Otherwise pretty solid, IMO.

i forgot about the New English Hymnal! Great work. Also the Catholic Hymnbook. The only downside for American congregations is how the music and words are separated. It takes some getting used to, but is not impossible to do so.