Do you have a link to that announcement?

There's more to this than meets the eye. An acquaintance told me that WLP wasn't able to pay royalties on time this year; its music sales aren't profitable and it's struggling. GIA is taking advantage of a competitor's weakness to acquire its catalogue.

There's more to this than meets the eye. An acquaintance told me that WLP wasn't able to pay royalties on time this year; its music sales aren't profitable and it's struggling. GIA is taking advantage of a competitor's weakness to acquire its catalogue.

Since the announcement a while back that they’d be unable to make royalty payments, I’ve yet to even see a statement to see what was owed. It seems like Walton is doing well under the GIA banner—hopefully WLP does as well.

There's more to this than meets the eye

What I have found "funny" about WLP is that their missalettes have arrived at the last minute every time the liturgical season changed for about a year. Supposedly, they had "printing problems," their term not mine.

Of course, you trust GIA don't you since their motives are always pure?

Share?

I was considering a new GIA hymnal in the next year or two. Perhaps now, I might wait and see if combining the library will give us the best of the two and clear out the junk. I do like some of the Paluch We Celebrate repertoire. Anyone know of a timeframe for Gather 4?

Well, they aren't strictly speaking *necessary* for sung psalms, in the USA, given that GIRM 61 in the USA continues to grandfather translations previously approved for liturgical use - and that would require an abrogation of such prior approvals to undo, which I have not heard being done.

I hope the J. S. Paluch "Seasonal Missalette" continues as an independent item.

I always thought, qualitatively, it was one of the two best paper missalettes out there ("Celebrating the Eucharist" from Collegeville being the other, with the "Leaflet Missal" coming in as a respectable third-place "honorable mention").

Gaudete in Domino Semper!

They also threw in the "Anything is subject to change at any time" line

@NihilNomiis asked for my opinion on another thread

My perception of each of the Big Three's primary mission:

- GIA: Give the church what we think it needs to change it to be the way we think it should be
- WLP: Give the church what the people in it actually feel that they need
- OCP: MONEYMONEYMONEYMONEY

So you have an agenda-driven publisher, a profit-focused publisher (don't @ me about their tax status), and a publisher trying as best they can do the yeoman's work of providing solid resources for the church in its current state.

I cannot make any judgements about one of the three being the best on any objective measure of, for example, musical quality or theological orthodoxy or whatever. But I believe WLP is the most honest and humble. And now they are owned by the people who want to sing a new church into being (yes I know OCP owns that song). That does not, in my opinion, bode well for church music.

The best thing that GIA could do is let WLP operate as a wholly owned, but relatively independent, subsidiary. That seems unlikely, though. Their catalog will get folded in and the line of separation will dissolve and we will have lost an important presence in church music publishing. GIA and OCP will deepen their stranglehold on the hymnal and pewbook market - as well as the conference speaking circuit - making things even more difficult for the tiny publishers like Illuminare and CC Watershed.

The whole thing kinda makes me sad.

But there is an opportunity here. Two feels imbalanced, and I think there is a vacuum occurring. If Illuminare or one of the other indies - or a new venture, even - could step into that gap, it could be a wide opening for traditional sacred music to have a serious place at the conference table.

Protect Illuminare at all costs!

It doesn't require a ton of money. Just a ton of time. Money could buy that, but it isn't absolutely necessary.