Liturgical HON

[oopsorganist]

We need to replace or increase our hymn books so there are enough for everyone......... I asked for Laudate but Father says he thinks the Liturgical HON will be better (some views that Laudate is hard to find stuff as the order is different ... there certainly seems to be a lot of turning over required for the keyboard and it is hard to find stuff when you are used to alphabetical order...... but is this Lit. HON any better? We have got 87 HON and 65 CFE at the moment,

and lots of bits of paper with hymns typed out on, all in a muddle.

I have not looked at it yet. It looks like the old HON but with the Clapping Gloria in it. I am not really in the mood to start again with yet another hymn book.

[pirate]

Speaking as someone who has landed in a parish with Liturgical HON, I would say, REALLY don't go there - the selection of music for the parts of the Mass is dire (too many paraphrases); the children's section is excruciating; none of the Taizé and other chants have melody lines; and there is a huge section at the back with psalms for the day, none of which I have ever been inspired to use (and I look at each week's example as it arises). And the editing on some of the hymns has meant that some items which my new parish used to sing have been abandoned because people can't bear the new texts.

However, having said that, I couldn't enthuse wildly about any of the others on offer - where I used to be we used Celebration for Everyone, which I did find more of a resource for singing the liturgy, although it did have its editing issues.

I haven't used Laudate as a parish resource, and its page layout seems tight (very!) but I find the range of music is better for the communities I've been part of. I use it as a 'what's out there' resource rather than a standard hymnbook, and find it v.useful for that.

[Gwyn]

Hi Ooops,

It may be worth making a few enquiries as to the progress of
http://www.ssg.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=213

It'd be a shame to jump in and replace/add to your current stock only to find that something wonderful is just around the corner.

Happy hunting.
Gwyn.

[musicus]

I must agree with Pirate. HON Liturgical would be my last choice, for all the reasons s/he has mentioned. I would recommend either Celebration Hymnal for Everyone (the latest edition, including all the supplements; i.e. hymn numbers 1-1009), or Laudate. Laudate might be rather strong meat for your parish (reading between the lines), and not everyone likes the mangling of some of the traditional texts for inclusive language purposes, but I find it much easier to play from (and there is much less Estelle White and other suchlike).

If you don't have all these, you might try contacting the publishers (Mayhew, McCrimmons and Decani, respectively) and ask for a sample copy.

Whatever you choose, remember you will be living with it for years to come!

[oopsorganist]

Yes, hopefully!

There is between those four hymnals an overwhelming amount of hymns many of which say the same thing, like, here's some bread and stuff thanks and all that, so one is pretty much as good as another but ........all the real big trads. should be in all of them shouldn't they? Maybe. And if is going to be new it should be really new I think. We only need four hymns in our parish anyway. There's hardly any Farrell in LIT. HON.

It means investing nearly a thousand pounds. And we need a roof repairs, not to mention the state of the organ. Sound system would come in handy too so people could hear our dreadful singing.

The cheapest seams to be Laudate. Anyway, I've bought Laudate for myself and see no reason why I should have to now go out and but yet another set of books.

I think I'll stick my ground. I'll look at the link, Musicus. If it does not have As if you were not there and Take this moment , and Enemy of Apathy I will try to make them get Laudate. CFE would do especially if the numbers are not different from ours to the latest print with supplement.

[oopsorganist]

Sorry I meant Gwyn

I had read that thread a while ago but is anything coming out soon? we really need something now or I have to keep making out service sheets which is a waste of paper and time too, I suppose.

[VML]

I have only come across Liturgical HON on a weekend away from home. Did I see a Mass setting to Country Gardens?!!
Sorry if I'm wrong, but I came across another HON variation a couple of years ago with a set of hymn words intended to tie in with every Sunday reading of the cycle, set to familiar tunes but, if I remember, all words by the same writer... Did anyone actually use any of them?
It reminds me of one Midnight Mass when I was persuaded that it would be a good idea to use a Mass setting to familiar carol melodies. I don't really think it worked.

We're going to have to spend some money soon. The editing of so many books is frustrating when editors feel they have to keep up with PC sensitivities. It makes it so difficult to use two different editions of the same book: someone will have mucked around with the text, so earlier editions are immediately obsolete.
Good luck Oops, I hope you find a satisfactory solution,
V

[nazard]

If you have the licences and are producing service sheets, I'd stick with it.

The monkeying with the words in all in print books except the catholic hymnbook is likely to upset a lot of people. Not all of it is gender neutering, some is removing references to sin, sacrifice, hell and other rather significant topics.

I can't recommend the catholic hymnbook either, it has done very unusual things to the music and taken the easy option on the second half of the twentieth century by ignoring it.

Would someone please produce a book with all the standards unmodified as far as possible, a selection from the Kyriale, some modern mass and psalm settings, and a selection of the better post 1950 material? I don't think it needs to be more than about 600 items, present books are just too big.

A question to finish: does any catholic hymnbook have "How shall we sing that majesty?" to "Coe Fen"?

[Peter]

If you have the licences and are producing service sheets, I'd stick with it.

I agree wholeheartedly. This is how we work at my church and it enables us to pick hymns from a wide variety of sources (several hymnbooks as well as home-grown hymns or items picked up from Composers' Group meetings) to get the optimum choice of hymns for that Sunday's readings, the congregation that has to sing them and the musical resources available to accompany them.

The source books we have available include both Laudate and LHON. The former is well indexed with lots of useful suggestions for each Sunday in the three-year cycle but you have to watch out for misprints and discrepancies between the full music and congregational editions. The latter gives four suggestions for each Sunday, most of which I find pretty dire.

Sorry if I'm wrong, but I came across another HON variation a couple of years ago with a set of hymn words intended to tie in with every Sunday reading of the cycle, set to familiar tunes but, if I remember, all words by the same writer... Did anyone actually use any of them?

You're not wrong: this is one of the other source books I use a lot. It's not an edition of LHON; it's a separate publication, though also from Kevin Mayhew. The texts are by Michael Forster and were published in 1993 as "Themesongs" and reissued (with some texts slightly modified) in 2002 as "Instant Hymns". They all fit standard tunes and are covered by the CCL licence. Some, but by no means all, are included in LHON.

I have only come across Liturgical HON on a weekend away from home. Did I see a Mass setting to Country Gardens?!!

Not a full Mass setting, but nos 31 and 32 are "Gloria" paraphrases set respectively to "Country Gardens" and "The Ash Grove".

I haven't used Laudate as a parish resource, and its page layout seems tight (very!) but I find the range of music is better for the communities I've been part of. I use it as a 'what's out there' resource rather than a standard hymnbook, and find it v.useful for that.

I agree that Laudate is a very useful resource for the reasons given above. A former organist at my church praised it for what he found a clear and helpful layout of the music.

So, to answer Oops' original question, if I had to use just one hymnbook it would certainly be Laudate rather than LHON. I'm not familiar enough with CFE to comment on it. I have had to choose hymns at a church where they only had Laudate and on the whole I managed OK, though I would have preferred the freedom to pick and choose - which is what a DIY sheet cribbed from various sources allows me to do. It's not a waste of time if it results in good liturgy and if you can create a template in Word (or whatever other program you use) for your service sheets into which the hymns can be scanned and slotted it doesn't really take that much time. As Nazard said - carry on duplicating as long as you've got the licences.

[pirate]

I used to get quite exercised about all the liturgy sheets I was putting into the recycling bin after using them just once, so I started doing sheets that would last for more than one Sunday - even a whole season, with Gospel Accs and music that would turn up more than once (I also fondly hoped that people who could read the dots might look ahead and absorb upcoming music, but I have no feedback on whether this worked). So we used a combination of sheet and book, although we did have to make sure people didn't have too much to juggle. The Calamus returns were marked up per use of item, rather than appearance on the sheet.

[musicus]

I too must recommend home-grown service sheets. I have used them for more years than I care to remember, but always with permissions or under licence.

I make it a rule never to type a hymn text in more than once, but rather save it to the hard disc for future use. I always type in all the verses, even if - as with 'For all the saints' - I might be planning to skip the odd verse. Also, if the source hymn books have monkeyed with the text, I amend it! I have a folder (directory) called 'Words', which contains sub-folders 'A', 'B', 'C', etc etc, in which I save the texts. I used to do the sheets in Word, and that's just fine, but these days I use InDesign (for better control over the layout and typography). Naturally, I save all the sheets into a separate folder - which can save your skin three years down the line when you're panicking at the last minute!

[docmattc]

That's far too organised Musicus- I just have a very cluttered documents folder with files called names like tlimlams (The Lord is my light and my salvation) or sotboc (Song of the Body of Christ)!

For what its worth we use Laudate which seems more than adequate for the job when occaisionally supplemented by other stuff printed as necessary. We have both Calamus and CCLI licences. I'll sometimes print words in the newsletter for the appropriate Sunday (usually if its just a communion chant or different psalm response), or produce a sheet of music for the day if there's a few pieces. This is more usual for the bigger events rather than a Sunday in OT. For Lent and Advent last year I did a booklet for the season with music which wasn't in the book. This gave me possibility of including the tadpoles too. Off topic, but do we think giving the congregation the melody line helps more than hinders them?

My contact with LitHON was with the music group in another parish; I didn't think it was a great improvement on HON. In fact those dubious Gloria paraphrases are definitely non-liturgical.

[mcb]

It’s not an edition of LHON; it’s a separate publication, though also from Kevin Mayhew. The texts are by Michael Forster and were published in 1993 as "Themesongs" and reissued (with some texts slightly modified) in 2002 as "Instant Hymns".

There was an edition of HON in 1994 called the "New Century Edition", which included all the texts (about 180 of them) by Michael Forster. I'm afraid I never found a use for them - I dimly recall using one in about 1995, but that was it.

M.

[asb]

I used to get quite exercised about all the liturgy sheets I was putting into the recycling bin after using them just once, so I started doing sheets that would last for more than one Sunday - even a whole season, with Gospel Accs and music that would turn up more than once (I also fondly hoped that people who could read the dots might look ahead and absorb upcoming music, but I have no feedback on whether this worked). So we used a combination of sheet and book, although we did have to make sure people didn't have too much to juggle. The Calamus returns were marked up per use of item, rather than appearance on the sheet.

This seems a good idea. I attended a vigil Mass in Nice (France) a couple of months ago, and they had a sheet headed "Chants pour Juillet et Aout".
Each hymn was numbered and the numbers for the Mass were on the board. The Responsorial Psalm for each week was also there. Seemed to work well. There was also aseparate sheet with the texts (no melody line) of the sung Ordinary. I would have found the melody line helpful, but at least it showed any small variations in the text (repeated lines/words etc)

[presbyter]

The Calamus returns were marked up per use of item, rather than appearance on the sheet.

There's nothing to stop you making permanent copies of items but you do not go through Calamus for that (unless Calamus is the agent for the individual author/composer)

Contact the holder of the copyright - ask permission - state number of copies being printed - also contact the publisher if you are going to use material in graphical copyright - pay the requested fee(s). (Most Catholic publishers will charge you very little per item but watch out for big commercial publishers such as OUP - expensive [OUP was £15 per item in a hymnal I produced for a seminary a while ago - and that was with me doing the type-setting])