Thanks for this - useful stuff...


I was at a conference last week and Martin Foster was there (CBCEW liturgy guy). He told us that there already about 80 approved settings for the New Missal, which makes me think that I really must start posting them on here so people can have a butchers.

Is ALL the new music in chant? My girls from East London really dont relate to it 

Is ALL the new music in chant? My girls from East London really dont relate to it 

Good point, and thanks for reminding me!

I was going to follow up the original post with an update. I recently went to a musical training day put on by the Birmingham Diocese to prepare choirs, musicians and priests for the music in the new translation. It was run by the ever-entertaining Fr Peter Jones, who wrote the Mass setting for PJPIIs Coventry Mass in '82.

We sang our way through a large part of the new ICEL official missal chants (see above), which I found pretty manageable - they are simple and to the point. He also spent much of the evening going through pieces which contained the new words. Some were new, I think, and others were re-workings of already existing Mass settings (one being his 'Papal' Gloria). Many were based on plain chant, others where for SATB and yet others were for guitar or other 'folk' instruments.

He also made some interesting comments on how music will be vetted in future (I don't know if anyone can corroborate this?). Any new works have to go to a group in London who then pass it on to a group in Washington, USA. New music must contain the new words and respect the grammatical structure of the text. My understanding is that there can be no paraphrases, but I'm not sure about refrains.

Fr Jones is in the process of publishing a book with many of the examples we sung during the evening - hopefully out during the next few months. The problem is that we are starting from scratch again! All new music for mass needs to be reworked or newly written and then published. That is a massive job. It is very likely that it will take a long while before we have anything like the repertoire we have now.

New music has to be approved by CBCEW and has to contain the exact wording - no abbreviations or paraphrasing, but you can repeat etc.

That's been the rule for years but every time I point it out I am accused of being petty.

I have heard from a very well-placed source though, that they aren't exactly going to be patrolling every parish and taking you to task if you're using stuff that's not approved though!!

Sounds like people will continue to accuse me of being petty.

All good points folks...

Not that we have allowed everyone to have their say, let's keep this thread to posting resources

I'm trying to avoid long threads on the new site. As well as other things, it smothers the original material posted - which in this case was really good.

I've just been looking at some of the new settings and revised settings on the OCP site.

They have a huge collection there.

I like the Mass of Renewal especially.

This publication contains both mass settings and hymns. It's an offering from Corpus Christi Watershed (those guys that do the recordings of the various chants on Youtube). Looks exciting!

Samples of pages from the Vatican II Hymnal

Further info is at the website below, and review copies can be ordered too.

Source: Vatican II Hymnal