That’s a suspiciously high price for a GIA octavo; they usually price their pieces comparatively to how other publishers price them.

Re the as-many-copies-as-you-need license, maybe if enough of us bug St. James about it, they’ll put together a Lectionary psalter for U.S. Catholics. Or, for that matter, a collection of Marian choral works. They apparently don’t particularly care to market to Catholic churches.

I would pick up an octavo of, say, Psalm 23 or another text that we use a lot were it a very good setting with the Lectionary’s (or other approved) text. But, for that particular psalm I already have two settings that work very well where I am, so I see little need for anything else.

Now, bear in mind that you may not need to purchase copies of the music for every person in the choir. If all the choir sings is the people’s response, exactly as printed for the people, my understanding is that the choir, then, is “part of the congregation” and thus doesn’t need to have purchased copies. I am not a lawyer, though.

The publisher whose charges are ridiculous is Universal.

I’ve had very good experiences, by the way, with University Music. They give you an automatic discount of 20% on most choral orders of over 20 copies, with an “early bird” special that offers 25% off if you order in advance and don’t need the music until August or something. And no tax. :)

"I find the "OneLicense" program to be rather generous: you pay a flat fee and you may copy any music you require."

Well, no, I don't think so... I believe that one is still not allowed to copy choral or accompaniment parts under OneLicense.

"That’s a suspiciously high price for a GIA octavo; they usually price their pieces comparatively to how other publishers price them."
I was surprised as well -- that was why i thought I might be misreading.

"Now, bear in mind that you may not need to purchase copies of the music for every person in the choir. If all the choir sings is the people’s response,"

I think this is SATB ...other than Taize refrains, perhaps, I don't think I've ever seen harmony provided in the reprint "box."

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

Dear G,

If you are writing Responsorial Psalms, why not submit them to the Chabanel site, so that others may learn from your settings?

As you probably know, we already have (free) settings by Gary Penkala, Sam Schmitt, Brian Michael Page, Arlene Oost-Zinner, Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, Cal Leferink, Justin Berg, and several other excellent composers. They are all different, so they give folks a lot of options.

OneLicense allows you to reprint copyrighted material from certain publishers in order to facilitate congregational singing.

For example, my parish usually uses Gelineau or Guimont responsorial psalms, for which we need the OneLicense.net license to reprint the music of the congregation’s response. We also sing Joncas “Take and Eat” and a few other GIA tunes that are not in Breaking Bread, which we have in the pews.

Many/most of the texts you find in hymnals with those PD tunes are also PD. And certainly any tune written in the past 75 years or so remains under copyright...which includes, yes, a lot of tripe, but also good, solid stuff like Hillert “Festival Canticle” and Proulx “Mass for the City”. Incidentally, both of those are covered under OneLicense.net.

By the by, OCP and WLP are not under OneLicense.net. OCP has LicenSingOnline.org, and WLP has their own (that I think lacks a fancy name).

Our (Baptist) church has a CCLI license (which is similar in intent, I think, though not in sources covered, to OneLicense). One of the little things that irritates my increasingly (with age) irritable irritability buttons is seeing my church produce copies of thoroughly PD songs (both as to text and as to music) with a "CCLI #..." footnote. I think this is tantamount to aiding and abetting what Jeffrey Tucker called a "shakedown". Like Hal Leonard's claim to have the melody line of "Stille Nacht" under a copyright dating back less than ten years. Such felonious fictions ought not to be given supporting documentation.

Leland

Agreed. Incidentally on the issue of copyright (civil, not canon) law, I agree with the founding fathers (don't recall which ones or where) who held that a seven-year copyright with one seven-year renewal was appropriate protection for intellectual property. Can you imagine how much freer we would all be if nothing more than 14 years old was under ©... ?

Leland

Francis,

Good question (the one about who gets the money).

Good observation - put the money into activities that benefit your parish directly.

"OK... some of you are going to have a horse over this comment, but, OneLicense seems like the One World Church for musicians."

Surreal!