New Liturgy of the Hours Hymnal
  • avscvltaavscvlta
    Posts: 80
    I haven't noticed any posts lately about the new hymnal. I thought it was expected at the end of this year? Anyone know? Was hoping it would at least be availabe for this Advent.
  • RMSawicki
    Posts: 121
    Ain't heard nothin' round here, but be assured if any announcement did come forth I'd be clicking "place order" a nanosecond after the option appeared!

    ;-)

    Gaudete in Domino Semper!
    Thanked by 1avscvlta
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,157
    There was some discussion a few weeks ago:
    https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/comment/244455#Comment_244455
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    It's coming. The main hymnal is finished, the indexes are being compiled right now. It's still hoped that it'll go to press by the end of the year. The unexpected closure of the USCCB Publications Office set the project back as a new publisher had to be found.
    Thanked by 3drforjc PaxTecum avscvlta
  • RMSawicki
    Posts: 121
    Yay!!!

    "Dear Santa Claus. I have been extra good this year. I have not yelled at any of my schola members for failing to use Dom Gajard's method regarding episemas, etc. Please send me a whole box of the new Hymnal for the Liturgy of the Hours!" ;-)

    Gaudete in Domino Semper!
    Thanked by 3PaxTecum StimsonInRehab avscvlta
  • smcatharine
    Posts: 47
    How will we know when it is available?
    Thanked by 1avscvlta
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    A significant marketing effort is planned. I’ll be sure it’s mentioned here as well.
    Thanked by 1avscvlta
  • RMSawicki
    Posts: 121
    Bless you for enhancing my Thanksgiving Day with this "annuntio" of...truly..."gaudium magnum"! ;-)

    Will have an eye on perpetual "scan".

    Gaudete in Domino Semper!
    Thanked by 1avscvlta
  • avscvltaavscvlta
    Posts: 80
    Two weeks have passed and we're in December now. Anyone have updates on this?
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    It continues to be close to going to press. The main body is finished now, and fully setup in InDesign—one tune was just swapped out this week, but I don’t think any further changes to the hymns are forthcoming, and the indexes are being prepared—which I understand to be quite a task.

    I know many would like it to be available already, but I can at least promise it isn’t vaporware. In these strange times we live in now, I have no idea how long the printing process will take, but it’s certainly getting closer.
    Thanked by 2drforjc avscvlta
  • drforjc
    Posts: 38
    Marc, any idea on the projected retail price in USD?
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    No—that will be set by the publisher, but I would expect it to be in the realm of comparable hymnals.
  • godfrey
    Posts: 21
    It looks like the publishers has been revealed in the November 2022 edition of the Newsletter of the Committee of Divine Worship of the USCCB.

    https://www.crookston.org/component/fileman/file/documents/Nov 2022.pdf?routed=1&container=fileman-files
    Thanked by 2drforjc avscvlta
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    Indeed, GIA will be printing and distributing the hymnal.
    Thanked by 2drforjc avscvlta
  • smcatharine
    Posts: 47
    I'm sorry it is going to be "optional". The Office hymn is not some sort of personal expression thing. The hymn is as much what we receive from the Church as the rest of the Office.
    Thanked by 3ServiamScores LauraKaz Caleferink
  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,025
    .
    Thanked by 3ServiamScores tomjaw mattebery
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    I stopped composing anything using official english texts years ago
    Thanked by 2ServiamScores tomjaw
  • Caleferink
    Posts: 429
    So, a Jewish family controls the worldwide rights for the psalter used in Catholic worship.

    Except the psalter has since been purchased by the USCCB. Yes, GIA owns/owned the rights to the previous versions of the Grail psalter (at least in North America), but Liturgiam Authenticum 117 requires that the respective bishops' conferences hold the rights in civil law necessary to publish liturgical texts. So going forward no private entity like GIA or, God forbid, OCP will have the ownership rights of such texts.
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    Quite right—the USCCB owns all rights to the Revised Grail/APC. GIA administers the earlier editions (63, 93), but they are owned by The Grail in England. Administration is quite different from ownership, but that distinction seems lost on many.
    Thanked by 2Caleferink francis
  • Caleferink
    Posts: 429
    So who owns the copyrights to The Divine Office Hymnal? USCCB, GIA, or someone else? If it's USCCB, then the hymns therein should be made the default; if GIA or someone else, perhaps I can then see why it would be designated as "optional."
  • smcatharine
    Posts: 47
    It's not a matter of copyrights. This new hymnal is the official English language translation of the proper hymns of the Divine Office. (Thankfully, it is being called the Divine Office and not the Liturgy of the Hours. The frontispiece of the breviary always said THE DIVINE OFFICE, by the way.)

    Perhaps there use is optional until the new breviaries are out which makes sense. Most are not nuns or monks who pray the office in the same place. On the other hand, MOST pray the office from their devices!
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    I’m pretty sure the texts are owned by ICEL, and the particular edition being printed and distributed by GIA (pew edition) is owned by the USCCB.
    Thanked by 1Caleferink
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,157
    In 2020, Msgr. Wadsworth told me that USCCB would eventually publish the texts; and all permissions issues would lie with the USCCB. So I expected that the Conference will own the texts.

    But other people may have more up-to-date information.
  • rleblanc
    Posts: 3
    Are there any updates on the publication of the hymnal? And sign of a release date?
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    The hymnal and accompaniment are finished, and as far as I know, they’re at the printer now—so hopefully soon.
    Thanked by 2ServiamScores DCM
  • Bombarde16
    Posts: 113
    .
  • DCM
    Posts: 70
    Half-excited, half-ready for disappointment based on the drafts I've seen. I hope at least the chant settings have been revised to make these singable. There were a lot of howlers where the chant melodies ignored English accentuation. Similar issue with the chants in the 2011 missal.
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,721
    where the chant melodies ignored English accentuation

    We just sang an alternate text to the melody Adoro Te Devote this past Sunday, and I deliberately shifted a few of the slurred groupings to make it feel more natural to sing in English. This is also why (controversial to some, I have no doubt) I bend the rules when applying Gregorian psalm tones to English texts. I always make it feel right to sing in English, rather than rigidly following the rules of Gregorian psalm tones which were designed for another language. Any time I've ever applied the rules rigidly, my choir has stumbled over the text, because it feels weird to sing it the way you would in Latin. Can't explain it, but it just does. This is no doubt the reason why St. Meinrad and Conception Abbey both made their own simplified psalm tones to better fit the cadence of the English language.
    Thanked by 2hilluminar CharlesW
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    "There were a lot of howlers where the chant melodies ignored English accentuation."

    That's pretty much fatal to the future of a hymnal, and any editors that are not aware of that should be replaced.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • Marc Cerisier
    Posts: 516
    ICEL did the adaptations and mandated they not be changed, so—if you don’t like it, don’t blame the USCCB.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    That reminds me of the decision not to point things in the Missal because they weren't in the Latin typical edition, an excess of treating Latin like a mechanical blueprint for translation.
  • DCM
    Posts: 70
    ICEL had pointed the Missal, but Vox Clara, among its many unilateral changes, removed the marks for the aforesaid reasons. I'd hoped that with Vox Clara defunct and Liturgiam Authenticam partly superseded, we could get readable, usable texts with end users in mind. Instead of the English office being smashed by the same wrecking ball that hit the English mass.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,703
    we could get readable, usable texts with end users in mind. Instead of the English office being smashed by the same wrecking ball that hit the English mass.
    @DCM
    So is this a feature or is it a bug? I supposes it all depends on what the ultimate goal is.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    DCM,

    Liturgiam Authenticam is a bad thing?
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    It was a badly written thing that never got near touching the issue of idiomatic euphony in the receptor language (neither did Comme le prevoit, the crappy rule paradigm it replaced) - when we think about the formative work of the translators of the early Modern era, that's what they helped to do. Fortunately, LA established the norm that rules/principles of translation can indeed be changed and perhaps someday we will have better principles adopted.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Liam,

    Comme le prevoit was a license to put heresy into the vernacular version of the Mass, by writing entirely new prayers and claiming them dynamically equivalent to those they replaced.

    Liturgiam Authenticam mandated accuracy, at least. Did it have flaws, or need improvements? I'll grant that.

    ClP's version of the Gettysburg Address:

    "A while ago, some people did something, and we're seein' if they got it right"



    Thanked by 2drforjc dad29
  • davido
    Posts: 873
    I think the problem with the English translations resulting from Liturgicam Authenticam is that they are not literally enough!
    The real travesty is the incredibly inane Nabbish Bible and translating the psalms so they have the same accentuation pattern as they do in Hebrew.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    CGZ: Note that I described CLP as a crappy rule paradigm and criticized it as sharing one of LA's major flaws.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Liam,

    I noticed that. LA didn't get close to receptor idiom -- is that the flaw LA perpetuated?
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,369
    IIRC Jerome argues somewhere that he had to use dynamic equivalence to get across the precise meaning of a letter he translated. And then goes on to comment that he did not apply that principle in translating the Hebrew Scripture, because he was often not sure of the precise meaning and therefore maintained the sentence structure lest the word order contained sacred significance he did not understand.
    Thanked by 1Chris Garton-Zavesky
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    "LA didn't get close to receptor idiom -- is that the flaw LA perpetuated?"

    The context of idiomatic *euphony*. A mechanical approach to translation of euphonious Latin can often produce *unnecessarily* non-euphonic results in the receptor language. CIP wasn't concerned about euphony either; it's not a value in either CIP or LA. That's what I meant.
    Thanked by 2a_f_hawkins Chris Garton-Zavesky
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Hawkins,

    When Jerome used dynamic equivalence we got the Vulgate. When ICEL used the same tool, we got an inaccurate, unfaithful, non-sacral mess forced on people for 30 years or so. So, while dynamic equivalence may not be an evil thing in itself, any more than a screwdriver or a hammer, in the hands of those who are incompetent or knowledgeable malefactors, much evil can be perpetuated.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • DCM
    Posts: 70
    LA misleadingly asserts that the only permissible way to be accurate is to be as literal as possible down to the word order itself. Which is a pretty outrageous claim given how little word order matters in Latin, and how much it matters in English. You can have accurate translations that express the meaning of the Latin in a pretty literal sense without trying to torture English into succumbing to Latin grammar. The unjustly abandoned 1998 Sacramentary is full of beautifully done collects that would have served the church well.

    Fundamentally, texts that are meant to be spoken, and to be heard and understood by people who may not have a text in front of them to refer to, need to be composed with that orality in mind. Not a matryoshka doll of subordinate clauses nested within subordinate clauses.

    But getting back on topic, my point in mentioning LA was that the still-binding instruction for blunt-force literalism made it all but impossible to produce poetic, singable texts that sound like hymns, hymns that could otherwise have taken a worthy place in the long tradition of English hymnody.
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    The unjustly abandoned 1998 Sacramentary is full of beautifully done collects that would have served the church well.


    Any form of so-called inclusive language, employed for the purposes of catering to, mollifying or otherwise raising the profile of particularly and peculiarly modern social justice concerns over the communication of the content of the faith (such as, "for us and for our salvation" omitting "homines") has no place in the public worship of the Church because the liturgy is our contact with eternity, and so is not limited in time.

    Thanked by 5tomjaw drforjc Caleferink LauraKaz dad29
  • davido
    Posts: 873
    The King James with its literalism, archaic word order, and nested clauses served Christians for hundreds of years. It even spawned now famous phrases in colloquial speech and literature.
    It’s also a fallacy that the texts need to be understood from hearing. They are all written down and can be studied. And in the case of the prayers, they are not addressed to the congregation and I’m sure God can comprehend complicated syntax.
    Thanked by 2Chris Garton-Zavesky drforjc
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,369
    Chris G-Z as I said above, Jerome did NOT use dynamic equivalence when writing the Vulgate
    Now I not only admit but freely announce that in translating from the Greek -except of course in the case of the Holy Scripture, where even the syntax contains a mystery - I render not word-for-word,but sense-for-sense. - 4
    (St Jerome 395 CEi1997: 25

    4:- 'Ego enim non solum fateor, sed libera voce profiteor, me in interpretatione Graecorum, absque scripturis sanctis, ubi et verborum ordo et misterium est, non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu' (St Jerome Epistolae Vol. I1 (395 CEl1565: 287)). The English translation is by Paul Carroll and is quoted in Robinson (199713: 25) my emphasis


    davido - God is presumably capable of understanding both convoluted syntax and Nabbish, that is not the issue. As Prosper of Aquitaine commented, an important role of orations is to build up belief. If you look at the orations you see they are all in the plural, voiced by the priest on behalf of the congregation. It was a major concern of the Council of Trent that congregations should learn from these orations (Session XXII ch viii), as repeated by VII in SC.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Hawkins,

    Excuse me. I misunderstood what you wrote.

    My point would stand: if Jerome and ICEL both used it, it wouldn't be an evil tool, in and of itself, but the vastly different results would not be blamable (or creditable) to dynamic equivalence.

    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,157
    @DCM wrote:
    LA misleadingly asserts that the only permissible way to be accurate is to be as literal as possible down to the word order itself.


    And I found this passage which mentions "the ordering of words":
    [paragraph 57a]) The connection between various expressions, manifested by subordinate and relative clauses, the ordering of words, and various forms of parallelism, is to be maintained as completely as possible in a manner appropriate to the vernacular language.


    But I'm not sure that this is what DCM was referring to, since it doesn't seem as broadly stated as what DCM wrote. Can anyone clarify?
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Chonak,

    The simplest explanation is that this:
    as completely as possible in a manner appropriate to the vernacular language
    slipped DCM's attention.
  • Elmar
    Posts: 500
    I believe that possible in a manner appropriate to the vernacular language is the critical point.
    You just need to read 20th century philosophical texts in order to argue that having sub-sub-subordinate clause constructions spanning half a page are certainly possible and not inappropriate in most modern languages.
    ad impossibile nemo tenetur
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    DCM,

    I must challenge your implicit claim that but for LA we would have been able to produce beautiful, poetic, singable hymns. LA came about because all those years without it had, singularly, failed to do just exactly what you identify.

    "Blunt force literalism" is a strange phrase. What kind of literalism would you have accepted?
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