Digitized Liber, in Gregorio format?
  • E_A_FulhorstE_A_Fulhorst
    Posts: 381
    Is there now or has there been much progress on a digitized Liber Usualis? Or, to at least get us started, maybe the Liber Brevior? I mean, the ordinaries must have been typeset by somebody already, so that's a useful chunk done right there. How much more could there be?

    (Small project, I know. But this would be a useful undertaking, yes?)
  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    The Graduale Romanum has been typeset by Andrew Hinkley.
  • E_A_FulhorstE_A_Fulhorst
    Posts: 381
    Very cool. Has the rest of the Liber? (Reading up on the distinction, it looks like the Roman Gradual is principally propers while the Liber includes some extra hymns, &c.)

    Also, is this in the public domain? (I assume so, but you never know.) Is Mr. Hinkley's transcription?

    Also, would it be out of the question to try and get this published as a regular Liber? Or as a Brevior?
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,732
    There is demand for a re-typeset Liber, and I think I know someone who would publish it.
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  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    Many cheers to Andrew for his great work!

    I see, though, only propers in the file. Does he or someone else have a similar resource for the Kyriale?
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,182
    If nobody else is working on it, maybe I should consider it. But is there call for it? Wouldn't the new version need to be page-compatible with the classic 1962 Liber?
  • simonp
    Posts: 2
    I believe that there would be a demand for a full digitally enhanced new version of the 1962 Liber Usualis. Is anybody interested in working on this? The existing is still in copyright though. Does anybody know how we might contact the existing copyright holder?
  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    A group here wanted to typeset the Kyriale, the temporary results are here
    Thanked by 2Mark M. igneus
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,182
    The CMAA already investigated the US copyright status of the Liber before making a digital PDF copy available through its web site.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,732
    The 1962 L.U. is out of copyright in the US, but I believe it is in copyright in at least some parts of Europe.

    As for the question is anyone working on a re-typeset version... Including Gregorio, the St. Meinrad fonts, Festa Dies, Caeciliae etc., There are at least 10 Kyriale that have been re-typeset. Various groups are working on the Propers, Vespers etc. There are at least 3 different Compline books!

    If we were all working together we would have finished by now. What needs to be asked, is the L. U. as useful as it could be? Would it be better to work on a new edition?
  • E_A_FulhorstE_A_Fulhorst
    Posts: 381
    So how do we format these into a single document?

    Also, what would be in an updated Liber?
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,732
    The typesetting used by all these different groups is not compatible. I use Caeciliae font, which has a different look to the other font based work. Gregorio could be the way forward, as you can keep to a fixed format.

    'We' would need to take a look at the different projects to see which is the best way forward. It will be a lot of work!

    The 1910 Liber, has the Propers of the Sundays, Feasts and Common Masses, but does not have the Office as the later editions. It only has Sunday Compline and Vespers of major Feasts in the back. Would a new edition of the Liber need the Office? What about local Feasts?

    Any Project to make a Liber will need to produce most of the Graduale, and Antiphonale and these are the important books.
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    My interest in Gregorio files for the Kyriale would be for purposes of creating resources for parish use. Nowadays, I'm usually copying-and-pasting images from a variety of sources, which makes for a rather inconsistent look.
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    I would highly suggest gregorio. All of the other font-based works are not nearly as flexible. Gregorio offers a great deal of content-presentation separation, meaning, the notes t words are stored separately from any sort of layout or style, making it very easy to apply another style later, or in this case, apply a consistent style to the work of many.
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  • E_A_FulhorstE_A_Fulhorst
    Posts: 381
    Probably best to transcribe the 1962 Liber at first, for a variety of reasons:

    1. Easier to split up the work.
    2. Less of a learning curve.
    3. If it falls through halfway through, it could be scavenged for future undertakings.

    &c.

    Any leads on a more complete Gregorio-format Kyriale? (Work smarter, not harder.)
  • simonp
    Posts: 2
    How about we begin with creating a list of all the sections that we would like to see in a "complete" new Liber Usualis and then discuss the pros and cons for each. Then we could split up the workload and complete it. Many hands make light work. I've begun pricing production costs. Once we have a finished manuscript we could print.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,169
    May I interject here that there's a difference between transcribing, faithfully to contents, something like the 1962 Liber. Anything else that might be produced should almost certainly be given a different name, especially if it is to be more (or less) compendious than (or faithful to) the original.

    If the final product is truly complete and contains substantially more than the Liber Usualis, it might be called something like "Liber Universalis" (although "LU" would then be rather ambiguous) or perhaps "Liber Generalis" as an even better choice.

    However, I would recommend first working on trying to compile a faithful transcription of the 1962 LU, for the simple reason that it is normative. Furthermore, I would think that anything less than a full transcription would be inadequate and simply amount to clutter and confusion. After a full 1962 LU is digitized and published online, there would be further issues to be considered and negotiated with extending the result to something substantially larger.
  • Yes, GR of 1961 and more recent, and other Solesmes books, including LU, appear to be still under copyright in EU (70 years since becoming public for anonymous works). Read the copyright notice in GR1962: "Omnia jura vindicabimus, tam in universam nostram excogitandi scribendique rhythmi rationem quam in carmina quae non inveniuntur in vaticana editione sed ex Solesmensibus libris excerpta sunt." This means that the chants for the feast more recent than 1942 can not be copied or distributed in any way. It would include Assumption (1950 version), Immaculate Heart of BVM, St. Joseph the Worker, Common of the Popes, the new pieces of the Holy Week, unless something of that has been included in Graduale Simplex.
  • Hi, I've typeset the Graduale Romanum and I would dearly love to typeset the Liber. I think by accident I removed some of the GABCs. Apologies for any missing files! I'll upload an updated tarball of my GABC collection shortly.
  • ok, here goes:
    Solesmes 1961
    1908 Vatican edition:
    Proofed
    Draft conversions [from 1961]

    The 1908 and 1961 have the same melodies, but differ in the spacing between some notes. Removing the Solesmes markers was the easy part, it's conforming the spacing between some notes that is the time consuming part. The drafts are there anyway if anyone finds them useful.
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  • E_A_FulhorstE_A_Fulhorst
    Posts: 381
    Tried to download but got an error message.
  • Which error message? Give it another try and let me know what happens.

    I've also uploaded a Kyrie (Solesmes 1961)
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,182
    Andrew, I assume EAF doesn't have TeX or Gregorio installed, so the source files may not be much use to him.
  • Good point. The Kyriale file includes the PDF. At the moment I'm working on getting the Antiphons typeset before I resume assembling PDFs of Propers, but there are a few I have made available and many more I can make available at short notice.
  • E_A_FulhorstE_A_Fulhorst
    Posts: 381
    No, it was the tar.gz format of compression. Vista insists that it can open it with native drivers --- and fails spectacularly.
  • In that case I'll upload some zip versions soon.
  • RagueneauRagueneau
    Posts: 2,592
    The 1908 and 1961 have the same melodies, but differ in the spacing between some notes.

    I would be interested to know which ones differ. I've never been able to find any differences in spacings (except an occasional error in the Pustet or Solesmes books post-1908).
  • As JMO says there are very few differences. Seems clear that the intention was for there to be no differences. Here are a few examples:

    Alleluia for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost: the Liber Usualis has a half-space after the first note in the group of notes between the quarter bar and the half bar. The Graduale Romanum from various publishers has no space. So this is a typo in the Liber.

    Offertory for the Mass of Rogations: Editions of the Liber Usualis from 1961 and earlier have no space between the clivis and torculus on "animam", but the Graduale Romanum has a half space. In the 1962 and 1963 editions of the Liber, this is fixed.
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  • That's interesting -- there seem plenty of instances where a punctum mora in the 1961 Solesmes GR has a wide space instead in the 1908 Vatican Edition. Some of the time proofing my 1908 transcriptions is spent inserting "//" in the 1908 where there isn't one in the 1961 (or there's a punctum mora). I haven't checked against the Liber yet, though.
  • RagueneauRagueneau
    Posts: 2,592
    Do you own a Solesmes 1908 Gradual? I don't — I wish I did. All I have is the Solesmes 1908 Graduale with Cardine's notes written in, which I uploaded to St. Jean de Lalande Library several years ago:


    I think it is also fairly clear that sometimes there SHOULD be a space in the Vaticana, but through an error there is not. Joseph Gogniat gives some examples with the "isolated Virga."
  • The only Gradual I own in hardcopy is the 1974 Graduale Triplex. To my chagrin I don't even own a hardcopy Liber. The Chant I transcribe is from the PDFs available in the MusicaSacra Library. Liturgical books are a bit expensive for me at the moment. One of the reasons why I spend so much time transcribing Chant, apart from addiction :) is to help make Liturgical Books more affordable.

    A while back I started on a GoogleDocs spreadsheet of GABC code with the intention of having a row for each Chant and a column for each source Book. Eventually I would like to add to the Caecilia Project a dropdown menu interface for choosing which Chants and from which Book.
  • Great news! I have all the Antiphons from the Liber Usualis in GABC. They are only drafts at this point, proofread versions coming soon.

    Thus concludes another step in my project to re-typeset the Liber Usualis.

    Tarball
    Zip file
    Thanked by 2E_A_Fulhorst igneus