Looking for a hymnal for school Masses, but I'm having a specific problem
  • AbbysmumAbbysmum
    Posts: 222
    I'm wondering if what I'm looking for exists. I apologize in advance for the length of the post.

    I'm on my second school year of working with our school to build the liturgical music program (I started part way through the year last school year). I've been intentionally building repertoire for school Masses to get rid of the old P&W stuff (most of it anyway) and introduce a mix of "old" hymns (meaning classics/standards like Holy God We Praise Thy Name, Immaculate Mary, Sweet Sacrament, Let All Mortal Flesh etc), keeping some of better modern hymns that they already knew (Take and Eat, Christ Be Our Light, O God Beyond All Praising etc) and will be introducing some more this year both old and new (on the music plan: I Receive the Living God, Gift of Finest Wheat, an English version of Adoro Te etc).

    I plan music on a monthly basis, as all the students get 2 Masses a month (one in a small cohort of only a handful of classes, and once as the whole school), so they hear the same music twice, and then I will only change maybe 2 songs month to month as we build our rep. I also have a small liturgical choir that meets twice a cycle at lunch where we work on the month's music and then usually one "motet" type of piece, something different sung in unison or as 2-parts that we will sing post-communion at the large school Mass. We're a K-8 school. This is all over and above what our music teacher teaches in the classroom, but we work very closely together. Our music teacher is not Catholic, which is part of the reason why I was brought in.

    That's all pretty straightforward. I'm intentionally picking music that is 1. beautiful, 2. theologically sounds and 3. matches what they are commonly going to hear at a Sunday Mass. But that's also where it gets complicated.

    I've talked about this before - our parish is quite large and we operate 4 different Masses on the weekend. We are also very diverse, and this includes the school. All 4 main Masses are musically very different, all lead by different people, and include different instrumentation including a guitar Mass, piano or organ, and different vocal arrangement including cantors, a full SATB choir, a children's choir, duos and small groups. We have group leaders, but no overall Director of Music or coordinator. As a result, we have quite the library in the church pews. We have

    1. The very old Glory and Praise, 1st edition (used almost exclusively by the guitar Mass)
    2. CBWIII
    3. Introit Hymns for the Church Year
    4. Celebrate in Song (a supplementary hymnal put out by the CCCB when the new Mass translations were introduced, which also has about 3 dozen fairly solid newer hymns in it)
    5. St Michael's Hymnal 5th edition

    Plus an assortment of material in the choir loft that everyone accesses and uses from time to time, including Adoramus, CBWII, Glory & Praise 2nd edition, a handful of St. Gregory's and a filing cabinet full of public domain and purchased stuff. We also have a storage closet with many copies of the Young People's Glory and Praise and 1st or 2nd editions of OCP's Rise Up and Sing, which is obstinately a children's hymnal. Those things can stay in the storage closet.

    When I'm picking congregational hymns for a Sunday, I try to keep to 1 or 2 books for that Mass so people aren't juggling them, so everything is CBW or everything is SMH, for example.

    BUT

    For what I'm doing with the kids that's not really possible. The material is spread between primarily the CBWIII, the SMH and the CiS books. Plus, these are kids, so no one likes to share with their neighbour and they take forever to flip to the right page (by the time they get there, the hymn is done LOL). Also, because there's so many different books in the pews, even though we have lots of holders, there might only be 1 or 2 copies of any particular hymnal per 4 or 5 kids.

    The solution up until now, including years past when it was mostly P&W stuff that wasn't in the hymnals anyway, was to print song sheets for the school Masses with the words. It would just be printed on a 8.5x11 piece of paper with a single fold, making a booklet. They would more or less get discarded after every large school Mass because the music was usually different the next month anyway. This feels very wasteful. I experimented last year with printing ones that I would reuse for the whole month (across all the cohorts and for the large school Mass), but it still cost and felt very wasteful.

    Is this "worship aid" approach the best approach for my circumstances? Or is there a better solution? I looked at maybe purchasing a slim hymnal with not all but a lot of the music I have planned (or revising my plan to stick with what's in this theoretical book) and reserving it just for the school kids and not putting them in the pews but distributing it every school Mass instead. But I'm not finding one that I like. I need it to be:1. slim (maybe 30 or 40 hymns, tops), so the kids aren't thumbing through hundreds of pages, 2. affordable, 3. isn't comprised of watered-down kids stuff, and 4. only has the melody line, not the SATB (I looked at the Catholic Book of Hymns that Noel Jones puts out, but it's SATB and I don't want that for this group of kids).

    I've thought about producing my own, which I guess I could do and stick to public domain material. Our licensing thing is a nightmare that I've been trying to get fixed for 6 months, but it's low priority on everyone else's radar so even producing the worship aids have been pretty grey for me. I don't want to invest all this time and energy though if there's a better solution. Or do I just keep getting the kids to use the hymnals like they would on a Sunday? Does anyone have any suggestions for approaches, books, or other ideas?
  • TCJ
    Posts: 1,075
    Could you store printed copies and just have pre-organized stacks that the students can swap after every Mass? It works for me for the youth choir, although I realize that's a small group compared to a whole school.
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • rvisser
    Posts: 100
    Maybe others will find this an unrealistic idea, but why not just ditch the hymnals entirely and memorize a limited repertoire of hymns? This is what I do at my school (150ish kids in grades, K-12). For context, we sing the Marian antiphon at the end of communion, and a Eucharistic hymn, as well as Mass XVIII. Our whole school goes to Mass Mon-Fri. I am not there on Fridays, but they have Benediction at the end of Mass and also sing O Salutaris and Holy God. For feast days, we will also sing opening/closing/offertory.

    PROS
    - Getting little kids on the right page is hard. K-2 can't read fast enough to sing a hymn, anyway.
    - Kids memorize easily!
    - We can sang literally anywhere. We frequently have processions - Eucharistic, Marian, Fr blessing classrooms at the beginning of the year, Epiphany blessings, random singing with the whole school while we stand in the parking lot burning palms for Ash Wednesday...now I am ready to sing at the drop of a hat with students, and they are confident. No need to pass out (or make!) programs.
    - The adult parishioners appreciate the repetition. We are currently having Mass in our school gym while our church is renovated. If I plan ahead, I do put up hymn #s on our hymn board so the adults can find the hymns, but students do not pick up a hymnal on their way to the gym.
    - I don't have to plan hymns in advance because I there is no printing of anything. I often decide on the spot.
    - I am not limited to music in a specific hymnal (although most of what I use is from the Ignatius Pew Missal).
    - Memorization helps create a strong Catholic culture in your parish/school.

    CONS
    - Repertoire is very limited. I rotate six communion hymns (hoping to add more this year), four Marian hymns; we sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel (English or Latin) every day of Advent (priest's request) and Attende Domine every day of Lent (also priest's request). Christmas season is easy (and far too short for all the music I want to sing), and we have about ten other hymns the kids can sing easily from memory.
    - If you don't have control over what the kids sing in music class in school, this is difficult to implement. [I teach all of the students K-8 as well as most of the high schoolers.]
    - I am just starting year 3 at this school, so it takes a while to build.
    - For special Masses (Candlemas, feast days, etc...) I will teach kids one office hymn or something specific to the feast and print words.
    Thanked by 2probe Abbysmum
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,457
    Send me a private message and I could send you something that might be close to what you're looking for, or at least could provide some inspiration
  • novusgordo
    Posts: 64
    @rvisser: IMO this is a terrible idea. When I'm visiting an unfamiliar parish, nothing infuriates me more than not having texts and music for congregational singing available. [Edit: OK, that's a lie. There are a LOT of things that infuriate me more than that, but those fall into the category of "liturgical abuses".] Moreover, people's learning styles differ: some people do well learning aurally, but some people really do better with visual materials. You can repeat a limited repertoire to build familiarity, but don't force people to learn through aural repetition alone.

    @Abbysmum: The CBW3/CiS problem will (hopefully) go away in not too long once Music for Catholic Worship comes out. (Whenever that happens. Supposedly there was a release candidate circulated among the Canadian bishops, and they held an approval vote over the summer? That's the last I heard.)
    But as for the school Mass problem specifically... if this hymnal is specifically for use at school Masses, you could always issue it to the students the same way you do a textbook, and then have them bring it to Mass with them the same way one would bring a hand-missal. (My parish in the Archdiocese of Vancouver is actually working towards something similar to this, although it's intended for parish use as well. I really need to set up a git repository for this stuff, so I can better collaborate with people...)
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • Xopheros
    Posts: 175
    Several years ago, we created custom folders with hymn copies at our parish for similar purposes. Beware, however, that you will need a copying license. In our case this was not much of a problem, because there was a royalty collecting society ("VG Musikedition"), so there was only one instance that had to be contacted and that sent us a bill.

    Although this is much more trouble and not even cheaper than using a fixed hymnal, it has the advantage of flexibility.
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • probe
    Posts: 266
    Do many people use One License? c. €430 for a congregation of 200 with streaming. It's cheaper to stick to the out-of-copyright hymns.
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 3,409
    I have to use OneLicense for some of the "standards" that are unavoidable, especially at a cathedral. Things like Abbot's Leigh are still under copyright.
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,856
    COE FEN is another one. I try to avoid this problem, but it’s gonna come up every now and again.
  • davido
    Posts: 1,260
    Simplest and fastest is print a booklet for the kids with the music for that Mass.

    Photocopied sheets are tough for little hands and they make a lot of noise. A little booklet is better. It feels a little wasteful but you’re doing it for a good purpose.
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • rvisser
    Posts: 100
    @novusgordo, Yes, I understand, and that frustrates me too. I do put up hymn #s for the adults. The students don't have hymnals right now (since we are in a gym and have to take everything down after Mass every single day). When we are in the church, everyone has access to the hymnals but the majority of the kids will sing from memory. I use hymnals in the classroom to teach the repertoire.
    I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the good fruit that memorization has borne in my parish and school.
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 875
    While it may be very cringe worthy, given the circumstances, what was common throughout my life in elementary school and high school, was transfer the words to transparency films and use and overhead projector. They’re fairly resilient. My mom still has all her transparency films she made for school Masses from almost 40 years ago.
    Thanked by 1Abbysmum
  • novusgordo
    Posts: 64
    @SponsaChristi: do we really need to encourage the TV screens more?! Not to mention, if Dr. McLuhan is to be believed about the medium conveying the true message, IMO the use of overhead slides or electronic displays gives an impression of the texts and music being transitory and mutable, when we want the liturgy to be the exact opposite.
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 875
    do we really need to encourage the TV screens more?!

    Who’s talking about TV screens? You can just use a plain wall.
    Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Not everything is going to be perfect.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,856
    screens should be deprecated from the liturgy, whether we install TVs, projector screens, or just put slides on a wall.
    Thanked by 2novusgordo francis
  • AbbysmumAbbysmum
    Posts: 222
    While it may be very cringe worthy, given the circumstances, what was common throughout my life in elementary school and high school, was transfer the words to transparency films and use and overhead projector. They’re fairly resilient. My mom still has all her transparency films she made for school Masses from almost 40 years ago.


    There is literally no surface on which to do this. The church is very orate and there would be no wall on which to do it. I do have a projector though! But finding the transparencies too is tough, at least it was 10 years ago when I last used it lol.

    Maybe others will find this an unrealistic idea, but why not just ditch the hymnals entirely and memorize a limited repertoire of hymns?


    It's a valid thought. They had a lot of their old P&W rep memorized after years of doing the same stuff. My mandate was specifically to teach them different stuff. The have the refrains to a lot of the stuff I've been doing with them memorized at this point too (Take and Eat is a favourite, and Immaculate Mary).

    But I don't feel like I see the majority of the student body often enough. Most of our student body is Catholic (there's a small but significant number of "others", mostly Orthodox), and probably only about half to two thirds come to Mass on the regular, although that proportion is higher in the younger kids who are most mostly coming from immigrant families (they pretty much universally all come every Sunday). So as a long-term goal, it's possible, but in the short and medium term (next 1 to 3 years, say) that's not the solution.

    he CBW3/CiS problem will (hopefully) go away in not too long once Music for Catholic Worship comes out. (Whenever that happens. Supposedly there was a release candidate circulated among the Canadian bishops, and they held an approval vote over the summer? That's the last I heard.)


    I have heard that too, and I am very excited that might happen this decade.

    But as for the school Mass problem specifically... if this hymnal is specifically for use at school Masses, you could always issue it to the students the same way you do a textbook, and then have them bring it to Mass with them the same way one would bring a hand-missal.


    I would not want to be in charge of that lol. My preference would be to distribute and collect every Mass. I usually have willing student helpers.

    Beware, however, that you will need a copying license.


    That is an issue that I've been trying to solve since I've started. We have CCLI license, which is what we needed 20 years ago when we had LifeTeen Masses. But those Masses quit in 2005 or 2006. We keep paying it, but really we need a OneLicense that I think would cover us for what we have and do. Like I said in my post, no one finds this urgent except me.

    @irishtenor I will try dm'ing you.
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