http://www.giamusic.com/search_details.cfm?title_id=2193

Worship IV. Yes, it has crummy Haugen mass settings, but there are others that are useful. I like the Schubert mass, and so does the pastor. It also has a good selection of traditional hymns.

My parish is an OCP parish. Today's Missal and Breaking Bread are in the pews. We work some of the traditional stuff in, but mostly we use the contemporary music. The choir uses Choral Praise Third Edition. I like using the version with Lectionary readings although it can get a bit heavy if I don't have a music stand. http://www.ocp.org/products/30107334

There is little difference. The devil you know (in my case, BB) is better than the devil you don't. (If GIA had an iota of common sense, they'd've revised RITUALSONGS v2. I never thought I'd confess this, but they miss Batastini.
We're going weekly in November. More cross to bear, pain in the neck labor intensive crapola, but enough is enough. I just hope we sell parish on Lumen Christi as missal.

This past weekend I attended, while on vacation, a parish that had the Lumen Christi Missal in the pews and I have to say it was a welcome resource! They didn't use any of the music from it other than the Psalm, but even just that was very dignified and the resource just screamed class/dignity/beauty. I watched the family in the pew in front of us mark where the ICEL chant Gloria was with one ribbon and where the readings were with the other and I was just thrilled. What a remarkably better way to spend money than on disposable books that must be tossed in the trash regularly.

If you are in a parish where Adam Wood's suggestion just won't fly, then I can find no better hymnal in print than the St. Michael Hymnal:

http://www.stmichaelhymnal.com/

I would disagree a bit. I think we should teach the congregation to sing all the mass music plus hymns. They can do it.

I was hoping for an expanded version of Worship III, but was profoundly disappointed to find that Worship IV was in fact RitualSong II. I considered RitualSong a convenient book to start the gentle upgrading of a parish's worship to perhaps a combination of the Parish Book of Chant & Worship III. The Hymnals of 1940 and 1982 worked well, because the Episcopal Church could legislate a common book for the whole church. I don't see this working for us in the English-speaking provinces of the Church. However, we have had for centuries a common book- the Graduale Romanum.

Just curious as to why only OCP and GIA are being considered ... Or don't I want to know? :-)

Obviously it's the pastor that signs the check for hymnals, and many of them don't have the training in liturgical music nor the expertise in hymnals as we do, so they go by what they know. When I got with mine last week to discuss new books, I laid out sample copies of RitualSong 2 (sorry...ehm...Worship IV), JourneySongs, and People's Mass Book (which I'd love, except it's not been updated for the new missal, so it's pretty much off the table). My copy of St. Michael Hymnal hadn't arrived yet at the time. He immediately picked up Worship, and also asked about Gather (which I have but didn't consider as an option, and I think I've successfully steered him clear of it). Why? Because he is familiar with earlier editions of those that he had in previous parishes. Didn't really even look at JS or PMB. My copy of St. Michael has since arrived, and I showed it to him this morning. Again, he didn't even pick it up. [sigh]. Well, strictly speaking GIA and OCP, as I said before, Worship is the lesser of the evils, so it could certainly be worse; thank heavens I don't have to endure Sprit & Song.

theloniouslopez,

Have you considered GIA's new Spanish/English bilingual hymnal, "Oramos Cantando"? Here's a link:

http://www.giamusic.com/sacred_music/hymnals_new_oramoscantando.cfm

I don't know if the hymnal is available yet. If not, it will soon be in print.

theloniouslopez,

The hymns in GIA's new Gather hymnal are around 70% contemporary and 30% traditional.

The hymns in Worship IV are around 75% traditional and 25% contemporary.

There are some bilingual & multilingual selections in each hymnal.

More information is available at GIA's website. Whether either hymnal would be good for your congregation depends on your particular circumstances.

As sympathetic as I am to WO's observation and analysis, I know there to be many more factors at play in the editorial processes of compiling hymnals, not the least of which is the ever (and I do believe it will be forever "ever") present desire that there emerges a "Holy Grail" sort of American Catholic hymnal that will finally unify a stable, sufficient and satisfying repertoire for worship that somehow fulfills the old MCW three criteria and CMAA's own three criteria.
Can't and won't ever happen.
We ought not to forget the principal dynamic tension is that the temporal governance of bishoprics within the USCCB remain a subset to those of the universal church, which have authorized hymnals and missals, etc. at hand and that function quite nicely for usage in both the OF/EF axis for the most part. As WO noted with his "ad nauseaum" quip, and Jeffrey Tucker frequently rails about, "we" are still in our desert pilgrimage looking for accomodations, not necessarily a final destination, a musical Zion so to speak.
And good folk from Westendorf to Batastini to Alstott to Hitchcock, and now to Bartlett, Ambrosetti, Ostrowski and many others continue to look for a musical El Dorado, with good and noble intentions. This, too, isn't new. Higginson documents that we've been wandering for centuries in the colonies then States. Some of the outcomes are now regarded as "golden calfs" worthy only of defilement and discard. So what's a publisher to do to remain viable and still benefit, truly benefit the people of God if we can't find Zion in the Graduale Romanum or Liber Usualis?
Then martial their considerable forces to supply the people what they need and cease their profit margin, carrot on a stick consumerist philosophy that demand can be manufactored by the Mad Men philosophy that is based upon selling people upon the notion they will always need something "new and shiny and happy." Let the publishers consider letting local to metropolitan Sees articulate what their needs actually are, and then publish a product for them, another like product to another locality who also can editorialize what they deem best.
If Noel Jones, Adam Bartlett, Richard Rice and Jeffrey Ostrowski can do it from their desktops, no one's going to lie to my face and tell me the Big Three couldn't do the same in a heartbeat. Love to hear about that future from Fr. Chepponis and his peers at WLP/OCP.

I think it's important to note that the strongest critics of OCP and GIA on this forum seem to be selling a product of their own.

Like you, Gavin, I do not believe that statement to be accurate. I've noticed many "strong critics" of OCP and GIA who are not selling anything, to my knowledge. But I could be wrong.

Since I just signed the purchase order for G3 (against my better judgement, but nonetheless) I suppose I don't have much ground to stand on. Still, I have been reviewing various hymnals over the past couple years so here's my 2 cents:

I agree with melo, and furthermore as far as I can tell there is plenty of support material for the smaller hymnals (take a look at CC Watershed). I would love to e-mail my cantors with rehearsal videos--all well done and all for free. To do that with a GIA hymnal I have to purchase an expensive copyright license to do so, and in most cases make the recordings myself.

That being said, I have grown up with GIA hymnals and prefer them to OCP from the standpoint I prefer a "permanent hymnal" to a quarterly or yearly disposable. From what I can tell the Gather 3 and Worship IV are essentially identical --the only difference being the proportion of contemporary songs to traditional hymns. If you play mostly organ go with Worship, piano/guitar then Gather. I am critical of both hymnals primarily based on the text writing/editing. Traditional hymns in both have been watered down both in terms of language and theology. The grammar is poor, and not artistic and the theology is fuzzy (because we wouldn't want to challenge anyone's personal beliefs).

Take a look at Faith of Our Fathers, or "A Living Faith" as it's now called for an excellent example (it's the same in both G and W). As far the the contemporary offerings are concerned the social justice issue is pushed heavily and many, many of the texts are not in line with orthodox Catholic theology. Not necessarily contradictory and I'm not going to throw around the "H" word, but let's just say the hymns of Ruth Duck don't match my understanding of Catholic teaching--nor should they, since she isn't even Catholic, so why include them in a book marketed as a Catholic hymnal? Sure there are some great Christian hymns from the Anglican and Lutheran traditions that can transcend denominational lines, but those hymns are essentially Catholic and are often based on scripture and are at least certainly vertically Christ centered rather than horizontally community centered (think, Now Thank We All Our God).

Since your parish is already an OCP parish, and it doesn't sound like they are ready for a major change, then perhaps consider OCP's Journey Songs. Many of the traditional texts remain intact. The biggest difference is in the contemporary offerings--neither better nor worse just different. I can tell you that a colleague of mine recently ordered them for her parish and is disappointed with the keyboard accompaniment books. 4 volumes, spiral-bound and already falling apart. By contrast my 10 year old organ accompaniment book for G1 poetically lost it's cover this past Sunday. And, incidentally GIA offered me several free accompaniment books with my hymnal order.

Of course we SHOULD be singing the Mass. We SHOULD be singing propers. Gregorian Chant SHOULD receive pride of place. The reality is, most parishes aren't ready for a cold turkey switch to Vatican II or the like. I don't think any one book is sufficient for any parish. So pick whichever contemporary hymnal that will make your pastor and congregation the happiest and then give the Parish Book of Chant to your choir if you can get away with it. I would have pushed for the Lumen Chrsiti Missal which offers all you need for the Mass and that could be supplemented by another book of popular hymns and songs. Alas we got G3 with readings (and no propers).

[Happy to report that the one traditionally minded parish in town is looking at buying Vatican II]

You're always appreciated, Fr. C!

Stick around. You are a good source of information.

There is not a perfect hymnal on the market. Every one of them has strengths and weaknesses. Buying a hymnal is always a compromise.

For what it's worth, I have compared and written reviews for almost every (current) hymnal known to man, as I will be ordering about 1000 of them this fall. Some are a waste of paper, some are beautiful, but not a good fit for my parish. I even had to pay for some sample copies (really?). I'm not especially attracted to hymnals that don't have their accompaniment books finished yet, or that I have to "check back soon" for the music for the Communion Antiphon for next week. Love them or hate them, the "Big 3" have an excellent business model.

WO,

Who asked you to pay for sample copies?

Wow, that's a surprise that GIA charged you. I got both of mine for free, as well as a backorder on the Oremos Cantando, which would probably suit us for bilingual liturgies. Did you speak to someone when you requested the copies? I just flat told them that I am comparing them to OCP, with favor towards starting afresh with them, and in the end we ended up with W4. While it is not perfect, it certainly has fit our needs, and in the end, others had a say over me. The pastor noted that G3 was a little more watered down, and that W4 seemed a bit more traditional-minded.

Fr. Jim et al,
I'm mildly confused and surprised that it seems that my post may have been misconstrued as editorial or philosophical criticism of the business model of GIA and others. I took great pains to frame my observations as a historical POV to set up my point that the major publishers could adjust for a broader business model, nothing more, nothing less. I am not among those who've used (in my case OCP) for three decades who only see about 10% of usable content in the hymnal. If I'm guilty of anything, I employ likely 60-75% of the basic hymn/song/chant content over three of our twenty Masses in our four parish merge. Years ago, when HHHitchcock debuted ADOREMUS, I published a critique of it comparing its content to that of RITUALSONGS on my blog that exhaustively determined that the GIA product had much more to offer even a traditionally based congregation, save for the Mass settings.
All that said, I don't believe that the big gun hymnals should ignore the emergence of these major "special needs" collections of AB, JMO, NJ, and RR et al as inconsequential to the future of hymnals, particularly when much of their content is "gratis" under the Commons. OCP's Unidos/United hymnal is a mediocre first step to accomodate a two vernacular parish situo. But it fails to satisfy (I know this directly from my musical leadership among the four parishes) both the English and Spanish needs. In the mother parish, I wouldn't sacrifice 20 years of repertoire building (Breaking Bread) when we added one Spanish Mass, so we have to deal with Flor y Canto (v3) at greater expense.
Ergo, we are looking seriously at whether the subscription missal/perm or pulp hymnal model is fiscally worth it, not to mention morally suspect (tossing the Word each Advent.) But, if any of the Big 3 had in place a program whereby all the product they offer, with approvals, acknowledgements and rights in place, could be assembled according to the needs of a large order contingent (a diocese, a huge parish, etc.), I'd jump at the inconvenience of discerning the contents of that hymnal initially, so as to have a worthy product designed for the particular needs of my parish and its demographics. And you can bet that it will pay more attention to the conciliar documents than do any of the "all things to all people" big gun hymnals currently marketed.
But none of this is directed as derision towards the big three, so add my voice to those asking you to bear with strange folk like me and remain. My conscience is clear as I've tried to further the participation of Haas and Ambrosetti here in the past, and am firmly against the banning of certain legitimite voices (Flowerday) herein, no matter how repugnant they may be to my CMAA peers.
As we saw yesterday, NOW is not a time to part, but to come together and sort ourselves out and remind ourselves of first who we are, and then how much more we should celebrate in common as opposed to that which divides us.

I suppose each of us can only speak from our own experiences.

I can say that we used one of the big OCP hymnals when I started working for the Ordinary Form about a decade ago. I found it totally lacking in practically everything I needed each Sunday. I ended up creating my own "hymnal" for the parish made of loose-leaf sheets — all the items the OCP book lacked.

Furthermore, I can attest to being a young Catholic in the 1990s (I was born in the 1980s). At the Parish we attended, there was one of the most commonly used GIA publications.

I found the songs extremely damaging to my faith, even as a young person. The style of the songs I found silly, secular, and unfit for worship ("Sing a Simple Song Unto the Lord," — "Abba, You are the Potter, We are the clay" — "Let them come ... to the water," etc. I can't remember them all).

Attending the Latin Mass was a completely different experience. The Gregorian chant was out of this world — beautiful ! The priests were so serious during Mass: they never even raised their eyes. Very reverent, very serious, prayerful, holy.

I have no doubt the "Big 3" are raking in tons of money every week. However, I can say I found the musical style and theology of their "songs" very damaging. This was even as a small child, before I "knew anything."

Just my 2 cents.

JMO, just for perspective's sake and not mentioned to be contensious, what you "attest" to is reflective to your intent and purpose. Your statement, " I found it totally lacking in practically everything I needed each Sunday.", does not speak authoritatively, but only anecdotally. You know me, I'm not speaking as a remnant hippy who's been through the whole curve. I can, for example, cite our parochial school's 8th grade teacher, extremely gifted teacher, younger than you by a stretch. She has on many occasions shared with me how certain of these genre songs have edified her personally. I know this because she'll ask me to arrange some of them for the 8th grade bell choir.
I am still on the same page with CMAA personally. But, as has been mentioned here, there and everywhere, we can never assume that we speak for any minority or majority of the concerned folk with any certainty. We are entitled to think that our taste is more refined and more beneficial, but we need to be very careful in how we inculcate our preferences among the diverse demographics present in our congregations, yes? The example of the African vicar, newly assigned, offering his first Mass in a parish(OF) in Latin without preparation is proof of that caveat.
And I regret to say that your reiteration of JTs analogy of LitMusComplex glossy product to Soviet Life is flawed in that it is an example of Godwin's Law. Peace.

I can't remember them all

Our Lord is merciful in that regard, isn't He?

I don't program the stuff I find damaging to my faith. I suggest you don't, either.