I took a look through past posts and could not find an edition quite like I’m describing. If you happen to see it, please let me know where. Thank you.

A pox on those who add dynamics and don’t remove inter-staff bar lines.

I’ve been planning to make exactly what you’re describing since such an edition doesn’t seem to be publicly available. It shouldn’t be too difficult or take very long but I am currently finishing up another CPDL project before I get started on that.

Sorry I know that doesn’t help you right now, but if you’re interested, I’ll let you know if I manage to have an edition ready within a couple weeks.

but I am currently finishing up another CPDL project before I get started on tha

Evergreen.

As much as some of us prefer saving trees, the second. (I’m glad that you understand that in the Solesmes books it is San-ctus). If you add accents to dactyls and polysyllabic spondees I would 110% use this and never look back (two-syllable words need not have accents despite the LU practice).

And if you added it to CPDL with source (so I can transpose and create my own tracks) you’d be our hero.

That's amazing! Thank you!

I just found out that in the St. Gregory Hymnal edition, Montani put the 1st verse "Quia eduxite" in addition to just Popule Meus.

Accents are not superfluous, and neither are page numbers. Omitting accents would be acceptable before Unicode & modern keyboards made them easy to type, but the accent of polysyllabic words is not always obvious (I just heard someone says “Lévate” instead of “Leváte” so that’s why I would insist). Two-syllable spondees can only have one accent, so the Liber does go overboard there, I would agree.

As to page numbers, no I think people would rather not edit that. Make practice tracks, transpose, etc. yeah, that’s going to require fiddling with the source file(s), but page numbers? The PDF needs to be usable. This is not usable as is, sorry.

Thank you Joe Walker for publishing your edition at CPDL.

Here is the correct CPDL link.
(The forum software doesn't process symbols such as parentheses correctly.)

Charles Giffen
(CPDL board of directors president 2010-2020, board of directors chair 2020-present)

Latin accents are by definition superfluous. Stressing the wrong syllable happens even in one’s native language when saying an unfamiliar word, yet we don’t add accents to such words in English because all it takes to correct it is a simple clarification, like your example of “Levate.” If someone struggles with a particular word, they can simply write the accent mark in themselves if it helps them.

Two people gave you feedback, and you dismissed it. This is annoying to me on that level.

English does not have completely fixed accent: the varying pronunciation of blessed is a good example. French has hardly any accent at all. Spanish and Italian have exception; thus the convention is to put accents. People don’t have to like it, but accents are not superfluous when they are variable and people don’t know the rules.

I’m not inclined to waste time in rehearsal putting in accents when they don’t speak Latin natively.

If it is printed, they can find the accent without me telling them where it is; it’s a different story if they still can’t get it right (most people prononce salútem wrong, but I can then ask them where the accent is).

The very first word is a dactyl. Today we sang a motet that included Adjuva. It’s a word where almost all of the cardinals got it wrong in their oath in the conclave. I find correcting that extremely tedious.

As to page numbers, you assume that someone would use this just for the liturgy but even so: I sing from a book that has all of the plainchant in it. Anything else is an addition, and I file everything later. At the very least, I print a copy for reference.


it’s one thing to want to transpose or make practice tracks, but like I said, adding page numbers and then having to fiddle with gabc inside the score. That’s a lot of work for little gain when you could just add page numbers to the PDF.

If omitting accents and page numbers on small works is a nonstarter for you, I regret to say you’re missing out on a lot of really great and reliable editions at CPDL or elsewhere.

They’re not great and reliable editions if they lack page numbers, and multiple sheets of pages is not a short work! There is zero reason — I refuse to accept any! — to omit accents in modern editions of Latin texts for the liturgy when Unicode and easy input methods exist. And either I do something else, or I redo the edition (which often but not always fixes critical mistakes: there are real errors of syllabification.

I sort of understand omitting chant incipits when these are a matter of taste, but at the same time, the better editions have them even if I don’t agree with the choice.

And there are a lot of other amateur-hour things that make me want to take my hair out when going through CPDL, so you have unfortunately gotten the feedback that you probably didn’t want.

@GerardH thanks!

To add the original clefs and mensuration signs in MuseScore, I use Symbols. The software allows you to add a Symbol to any element on the score, but it must be anchored to a specific element, it can’t just be floating independently. Whenever you copy an element, all the Symbols will be copied with it. What’s very useful is that Symbols can be anchored to other Symbols.

So here’s what I do: I add a staff Symbol and anchor it to the first note/rest of the piece, then I add all the other Symbols (two more staff Symbols, accidentals, clef, mensuration) and anchor those to the original staff Symbol. I do this for every voice.

This way, I can arrange each combination of clef and mensuration a single time, and then just copy and paste the original staff Symbol (and therefore all its anchored symbols) to other voices within the same work, or to an entirely different file.

This works out nice because once an incipit has been designed, it all stays locally aligned and the only thing I have to do is align the first staff Symbol to be in line with the actual staff of the voice. I always position the right end of first staff Symbol 0.5 units away from the system bracket.

Sorry I hope that made sense, this is a little convoluted to explain in words.

@joewalkr04 Thank you, this is amazing!