I didn't receive a reply from this man when I emailed a few weeks ago, so maybe I missed the boat on this one. There isn't any other known way of obtaining a copy, by any chance?

(Does anyone know if and how legal issues were addressed?)

First of all, the author's heirs.

Anyone knows if this book can still be purchased in printed form? Thanks in advance!

That's a different and new book, for anyone who hasn't seen that listing before.

I have checked abebooks, Amazon and google, and they have no results. So at the moment it is unavailable.

Thank you for this information. I will certainly try!

@Dixit_Dominus_44 What do you mean by "the primary books for the Ordinary Form Divine Office"?

@tomjaw For Sunday and festal Vespers a single one: the "Antiphonale Romanum II", Solesmes 2009.

For anything else Liber hymnarius (Solesmes 1983) + Ordo cantus officii + Hesbert's Corpus antiphonalium officii (and some understanding of it's contents) + access to a bunch of medieval manuscripts (and some understanding of their various notation systems).
And you still have to compose set the responsoria brevia to music yourself.

Or you take Les heures gregoriennes - which are, AFAIK, not up to date with the current Ordo cantus officii, and don't contain the Office of Readings.

Or you decide to chant the OF Divine Office in the vernacular and you are instantly happy: there are a few languages with a complete vernacular antiphonale. Besides the English one there is one in German; a Portuguese one in two volumes (haven't seen it in person); and there is also a very poor one in Czech, by yours truly.

Is there a means whereby one might be able to download the entire Nocturnale?

The 'Vatican' edition is here, hand notated, https://www.dropbox.com/s/f6v7ms0356l1oax/Nocturnale_Tilburg.pdf?dl=0

The other option is Gregobase, https://gregobase.selapa.net/source.php?id=23&images=1
but you will need to download each set of pages and then join them up again.

These two Nocturnale will differ not only because they have been published in different years but also Peter Holger Sandhof who produced the more recent one did not appear to have access to the 'Vatican' edition. Of course in the Roman rite, it was not normal to sing Matins (apart from major feasts and these are found in the L.U.) and so it was often recited / recto tono from the Breviary.

That is why I wrote 'Vatican' Has anyone found out if there was a typical edition.

I would really like to obtain a Nocturnale, but I haven't gotten any response from the email address listed above, so I am guessing the last copies have been snatched up.

Does anyone know for sure the copyright status? I tried leaving a comment on Gregobase asking Olivier Berten, but it didn't seem to go through. I know someone who has a copy, and it would be really nice (for society in general) if we could get a good quality scan put online. If copyright isn't an issue, we could just scan one and then people could get their own facsimiles printed. If copyright is an issue, I'd be really interested if anyone has any ideas for what we could do instead.

Oh wow, I heard about the new Nocturnale project some time ago. Pleased to see there's progress.

The impression that the nocturnale of the Vatican basilica receives from the https://nocturnale.marteo.fr/ folks less love than Sandhofe seems to be correct. I'm not sure if this is a principial decision or if it's more about how familiar they are with each of these publications, how much of their contents was readily available at GregoBase etc.

Btw. the main organizer of the project is quite active at the Breviary and Divine Office Discussion Group Facebook group and the project has been repeatedly discussed there.

@OMagnumMysterium
What worked for me for a year was, using a pdf to have it just printed in 2 Parts. Wasnt exactly pretty, but for private use it did the job. (Thankfully i did get my hands on an original though eventually.)
Perhaps for better use one could have the ordinary printed alongside both the Propers of Saints and Time, so one wouldnt have to use both books at once. If you want, i could see to getting such pdfs ready.

Im not sure about the legality details, but i would insist that the intention of the compiling author is more important than formality issues. (Spirit of the law rather than letter of the law)

Im 100% sure, Sandhofer made that book in order for it to be prayerfully used, and that he does understand some simple measures taken to access it. It surely wasnt his intent to have the book sink into obscurity and disuse because of the publisher dissolving and not reprinting the Nocturnale.

Also i actually just noticed, the PDF file has 1352 pages. Ive seen some custom printers allowing up to 1500 pages.
If you could look around, what english speaking pdf printers you can find, that would be lovely. that way i wouldnt have to edit anything.
Though i may still need to do some editing. The Pdf source is lacking the propers for Saint Joseph, which i may still need to Photograph from mine and add in, lest there be none at all.

But do tell me if you want that to begin with. I´d like to know before going through the effort.

Disclaimer: the pdf file is not the best quality, though imo it is readable enough to be usable, as i have done for a long time.

Im not sure about the legality details, but i would insist that the intention of the compiling author is more important than formality issues. (Spirit of the law rather than letter of the law)

Once the author is dead, not only he and his work, but also his heirs must be taken into account. Sandhofe lived in an era when the spirit of free opensource software and other free (libre) content was already well established, but he didn't opt to operate this way, which definitely has something to say on "the intention of the compiling author".

Sorry for digging up this thread, I came across it by chance today and since I was cited in it...

Once the author is dead, not only he and his work, but also his heirs must be taken into account. Sandhofe lived in an era when the spirit of free opensource software and other free (libre) content was already well established, but he didn't opt to operate this way, which definitely has something to say on "the intention of the compiling author".

I agree, and HPS explicitly reserves the copyright of his own scores in a note in his book (p. III). I have made a genuine effort to contact his editor and his parents (who are his heirs) and have not received any response.

Therefore, for the purposes of the NR Project, I have asked Dominique Crochu to kindly compose, by way of contrafactum, and into the public domain, all the pieces that were composed from scratch by Sandhofe in the NR02 and for which we could not find sources that Sandhofe did not have (example: Holy Name; counter-example: Sacred Heart: HPS composed it, but there was, in fact, an ed.typ. prepared for the Matins of Sacred Heart, but never published, composed by dom René de Sainte-Beuve, which we found in the Solesmes archives and used with permission).

The impression that the nocturnale of the Vatican basilica receives from the https://nocturnale.marteo.fr/ folks less love than Sandhofe seems to be correct. I'm not sure if this is a principial decision or if it's more about how familiar they are with each of these publications, how much of their contents was readily available at GregoBase etc.

This impression is correct, because the over-arching editorial choice of the NR Project is to follow Hartker for pieces that are in Hartker, and to emulate Hartker for new compositions, and Sandhofe followed Hartker closer than the LNVat did. The discovery of prepared but unpublished editions for Matins at Solesmes reduced considerably the need to use modern resources besides those for pieces not found in Hartker. We did take some pieces from LNVat though for some edge cases.