This is indeed a gorgeous version of Pange lingua! I myself didn't discover this melody until just a few weeks ago, when I was browsing the chants available on www.christusrex.com: Pange lingua.

By the way: in the third verse (recubens cum fratribus) and last verse (compar sit laudatio) the text and music are misaligned...

A couple of things I noticed by glancing, in no especial order:

1. The tune for Conditor Alme Siderum seems to have an error. It ought to start "mi - do - mi - sol - SOL - la - fa - sol," but you have "mi - do - mi - sol - LA - la - fa - sol." Or if this is a variant, then I for one don't like it as much, since it tends to put musical stress on unaccented syllables like "the."

2. Looking at the Easter sequence, I think it would be preferable if (a) the title did not have accent marks, and (b) the Latin were broken up into lines according to the way it is sung, not "Victimae Paschali / laudes immolent Christiani," etc.

3. On p. 151 of the readings, there is a weird hyphen and period in the Gospel: "... without knowing where it came from -. although the servers ..."

4. In terms of page design in the the missal section: (a) Paragraph indents in the readings are much too large. They should two ems or so, maybe three at the maximum. (b) Correspondingly, an extra one-third to one-half of a line or so between paragraphs would make them easier to digest. (c) I hope you will not retain the right-justified psalms. As one design book puts it, "To set a body of text with a right-justified margin and a ragged left one would be considered perverse by most people, although there are occasions (in advertising, for example) when it can be used to good effect. Generally the right justification facility is used in tables or to align small pieces of text, such as headers and footers, with the right margin." "Perverse" is, I think, how it cashes out here.

5. I continue to hope you will include the text of the Exultet at the appropriate place. I can't think of a reason to leave it out. I also continue to hope that you will follow the standard practice, for readings with short forms, of putting the text that can be omitted into brackets, instead of expecting people to read only the bracketed text.

6. In the hymns, greater care should be taken with consistency in certain formatting issues. Look at pp. 222 & 223 of the hymns: the verses of O Kind Creator, Bow Thine Ear are all set flush left, while on the facing page the verses of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross each have a leading indent of a half inch or so. The next four pages are all set flush, and then we get two pages with indents, and then back to flush again.

7. In the headers of the hymns, it would make better sense to omit the words "Possible use" and things like "Communion hymn option" which appear all the time. It's distracting and limiting, and would much better be collected in a table at the end. It's also a surprising amount of page real estate to waste on something that 99.9% of the people (i.e., everybody except the one person who is actually selecting the hymns) have no need to ever concern themselves with. Maybe taking it out would allow you space to appropriately credit translators and tunewriters.

8. Also in the hymns, it would look better if the fi ligature were used where those letters appear together. I see that this is done correctly in the readings; it looks much more professional.

I have retained Pothier's original version, which is also used by all the modern Solesmes books and the New English Hymnal, etc.

Oh, okay. I guess I'm familiar with the other version.

The problem is, if these are omitted, and you use a hymn at any other time except the "prescribed," people always complain and say you "messed up."

I tend to doubt that that would be the case, but what do I know. Perhaps the better course then would be to eliminate those header notations altogether. I'm not sure what they're even there for, since, as I say, only one person in the parish actually needs to concern himself with the issue of what is suggested for when -- and even for him, it would probably be easier to work out of a table or index rather than flipping through to see the header on each page.

Not sure what this means: can you explain?

Which part are you referring to?

Regarding some of the other formatting things, the decision was made early on: clarity and ease in reading is to be preferred to "conventions." This was the entire motivation for the hymnal (not kidding).

Oh, I believe it. But the truth is that typographical and design conventions have been developed over many years to promote clarity and ease of reading. The reason there is a "convention" again right-justifying substantial amounts of text is that right-justified text is difficult to read, because the eye expects a relatively uniform left margin to come back to. This is also why huge indents are not used in any professional typesetting, since when the eye scans all the way back to the left it finds only white space instead of text and then must cast about for where to begin. Similarly, text that can be omitted makes better sense to have in brackets, because the mind is more easily able to parse it as "parenthetical text" which one can skip if one is in a hurry. No one is accustomed to reading only for bracketed or parenthetical text and skipping the plaintext.

It's what's shown here as the difference between the left and right columns (the fi is the top line):



(See further Wikipedia:Typographic ligature.)

Programs like Pagemaker ought to do this automatically, though if you're importing the lyics along with the music then you might have to go about it differently. It's a minor point, but I always look for it to see how detailed a book's typesetters have been ;)

Jeff, he's referring to the spacing between "f" and "i" whenever the two letters appear together. As the illustration shows, one can leave the kerning in the font, or if I understand correctly, use a ligature.

(Though I'm not sure why one is "better" typesetting than the other)

Okay, my one hymn that I'll suggest since I haven't put in a request yet.

The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came

curt jester: where is that hymn located?

godfrey: I can certainly look at those instances, but I cannot tell you where I got them --- I took from SO MANY different sources....

Mark: can you get me a copy of the new ICEL Exsultet?

Regarding special ceremonies (like weddings), in my view, these still need to made as "inserts" because each congregation has their own ceremonies, their own songs, etc.

Jeffrey:

I'm of course not privy to the latest missal updates, so the most recent "final" text I've seen for the Exultet is on pp. 176-179 (long form) or 180-182 (short form) of the pdf here.

I would suggest two reasons to avoid using "inclusive-language" versions of hymns.

First, changing well-known texts is creepy: it's an attempt to pull a con job on our memories, to pass off something as familiar when it's been subtly altered.

It is precisely Orwellian. (For those who haven't read 1984, the protagonist's job is to rewrite history: he revises old newspaper stories and books, including the photos, to conform to the latest political correctness.)

Second, "inclusive-language" texts may be under copyright protection by the publisher who made the changes.

P.S. I second everything that Chonak said about inclusive language. It should be noted that the St. Michael hymnal has done so well precisely because it put forth versions of hymns from the pre-inclusive language era.

Perhaps this has already been mentioned/discussed, but did you consider an alphabetical organization of the hymns (at least within each sub section)?

I would suggest two reasons to avoid using "inclusive-language" versions of hymns.

Hello!

QUESTION

Who said anything about using "inclusive-language" hymns?

Where does this occur and what (or whose) hymnal are we talking about here?

Please cite specific examples. THANKS!

Godfrey kindly pointed out two variants that could be improved by going to a "more original" version, and I will do this.

But who said anything about inclusive language?

I'm not understanding here ....

I would like to put my vote down for not reprinting the music for each verse. I have sung from a lot of different hymnals from a lot of different denominations, and the current format for the Vatican II hymnal hymns is more than confusing - it looks a bit unprofessional, if only because no one else in the hymn publishing business prints hymns that way. Plus it is not an economical use of space.

Also, this may have been addressed before, and forgive me if it has, but why not print the 4 part harmony for the hymns? If the music was not repeated for each verse, there would be plenty of space to print the harmony. Printing the 4 part harmony would eliminate the need for a choir edition, and the organist (or hired strings/brass for Easter) could play from any hymnal that happened to be laying around if need arose. And (wonder of wonders) perhaps even a congregation member might feel like singing harmony some Sunday.

I also think the header over the hymns seems busy. I would eliminate it altogether. The people picking the hymns will know what liturgical season a hymn belongs in, and any one else's opinion on the matter is completely irrelevant.

Congratulations on this project though - it is wonderful!

Jeff,

Keep on going! What a labor of love.

PLEASE, no inclusive language stuff. That's part of what's wrong with hymnody today -- no respect for textual tradition, the beauty of language, and long-standing English usage. "Progressives" aren't going to look at your hymnal for two seconds, so you don't have to try to please them; the ones who will try to adopt your book are the ones who are aware that the salvation of sacred music lies in reconnecting with the past, for the benefit of the future. We have to escape our self-made bubble of late modernity. Not that this is very easy to do, but we will perish without the effort.

This is a noble effort and looks very promising!

I would add my voice to those who would prefer more white space, standard hymn layout and less information. Melody line only is fine for a pew edition.

It seems to me that the current layout with music for each verse is busy, confusing and makes it harder rather than easier to read. Hymnal conventions have come into being for a reason, I would say. Really, what would be most useful would be a bunch of hymns in alphabetical order, and leave the suggestions for when to use them for the index.

A layout like this: http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Images/Winkworth-Chorale/Cong/211-Great_God.jpg is very clean, simple and beautiful, and easy to sing from; would you consider going more toward that kind of direction in terms of layout?

+1 for Hail Thee Festival Day -- or is the Vaughan Williams setting under copyright?

Jeff: Can you tell us what will be available in terms of an accompaniment book?

I have to say it Jeff. I'm a big fan of the Rorate Caeli being placed into the Advent Section. I use it on Advent IV.
Also, on hymns like "To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King", you have the refrain at the very top instead of after the verse. Why is that? Curious.
BMP

As a sidenote to the language issue-
It was pointed out earler that you apparently have some vestigial inclusivity, stemming from your source material (sometimes the 1982?).
I put together a small hymnal for a interdenominational house-church a while ago, and kept running into the problem of different people knowing different versions of the same hymn.
If your goal is something like authenticity or making sure you have the ur-version of each text, I would do a few minutes of research on each one.
The website is poorly put together, but Oremus hymnal is a great resource for original texts. Also, Wikipedia.
You'd be surprused how many different versions there are of what seems like the same text, even within "traditional" sources.

Is there an index available? I could much more easily "see" what's missing if I'm looking at a list rather than having to page through the hymnal to see where a certain hymn is (example: I initially thought "At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing" was missing, because using it as a Communion hymn did not occur to me).

I'm very fond of "O Lord with Wondrous Mystery" Gannon/Andriessen, though it's probably still under copyright.

From a friend:

For General/Communion:

'O God of Earth and Altar' (Lllangloffan) text is by G K Chesterton
'My Faith Looks Up to Thee' (Olivet)
'Let Thy Blood in Mercy Poured' (Luise) Crueger and Brownell
'Draw Nigh and Take the Body of the Lord' to Gibbon's Song 46
'Here, O My Lord' to Peel Castle or Nyack
'In Heavenly Love Abiding' Nyland
'Deck Thyself, My Soul, with Gladness' Schmuecke dich
'My God, Accept my Heart this Day' Song 67
'I Sought the Lord, and Afterward I knew' to 'Faith' by J. H. Moyer
'Blest are the Pure in Heart' to Franconia

'At the Name of Jesus' really should be to be to King's Weston. It's far and away the most known tune in my experience.

These are favorites, as well:
'Beautiful Saviour/Fairest Lord Jesus' to St. Elizabeth
'O Sacrament Most Holy' Fulda
'Panis Angelicus' Sacris Solemnis

13
Verse Numbers should all align-left and stack one a top each other.

Additionally:
I'm not sure how I feel about not having the 4-parts in the pew edition.
But I'm absolutely sure I want you to have a choir edition available which does have harmonizations etc.
Are there plans to make that available?


(PS: That, and accomp. editions, etc, are the reasons to have hymns numbered, rather than pages numbered. Pagination might vary from the pew version to the choir version to the organists versions).

I think page numbers are good, if there is one hymn per page. But -- notwithstanding where they are in the rest of the book -- for the hymns they should be up at the top next to the titles. Otherwise you will forever be stuck referring to "The hymn on page 127," because nobody will have any idea how to find "hymn 127."