Forth in Praise
Liturgy Commission Music

This is an information page only. We are not advertising, nor making any judgments about style, quality or suitability for parish use. Forth in Praise can be contacted with enquiries or comments at massmusic@forthinpraise.co.uk

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The text itself and the official chant

The sections of the new Mass text which are customarily sung in our parishes - Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Memorial acclamations and Agnus Dei - can be found here.

The full text is at Roman Missal on the American bishops' website. The English bishops' website also has information on the text.

The official chant of the English version of the new Mass is published in downloadable PDF form by ICEL here.

Forth in Praise has created a staff notation version of the main people's chants of the new Missal:

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The new liturgy in Scotland

Roman Missal Scotland is the official Scottish website giving information about the new Missal translation.
It contains downloadable audio files of the ICEL chant.

The new liturgy in other countries

England and Wales

Ireland

USA

Australia

New Zealand

Canada

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A Selection of Mass settings

PLEASE NOTE: Links to many more new and revised settings can be found on publishers' websites
and on the websites of national bishops' conferences.

An asterisk before a title means that the work has been approved in the country of first publication.
The approved settings listed on the Roman Missal Scotland website can be viewed here,
and in England and Wales here.
Other countries will have similar lists on their own websites.

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Information and Resources Websites

(see also official websites for each country)

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Some publishers' websites

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EARLIER NEWS UPDATES

UPDATE MARCH 2013

by Evelyn

This update is probably a bit patchy, as I have been out of circulation for the last couple of months (see Organists’ Blog for 17 March). Please email us with any information about new Mass settings, especially from Scotland, and we would be happy to link to them.

• Chants for Holy Week and Easter: we’ve been noticing increased hits on Downloads and Publications page, where we’ve posted some chants, including the Exsultet, in staff notation. A lot of people find this easier to read than the ICEL blobs. We’ve included the blobs, too.
  
  
• Tony Giovanazzi has given us a link for some of his Mass music. It can be found here, and has been added to the list of Mass music below.
  
  
• The March meeting of the publication approval committee has been postponed due to the illness of Bishop Toal. This has left composer Eugene Burns, who unlike many of us is a stickler for getting music officially approved before posting it, in a tricky situation. Read about it here, and try out his Chrisswell Sanctus.
  
  
• Happy Easter from all at Forth in Praise!
  

• AN INTERESTING NEW RESOURCE. The website of St Columba’s Choir, Maryhill, Glasgow (Director of Music James MacMillan), has just started up, and contains liturgical music and music news, including downloadable chants and other resources of interest to parish musicians. In the form of a blog, it also carries articles about church music, and is updated regularly. Well worth adding to your favourites.
  
  
• LINKS TO ONLINE RESOURCES Forth in Praise plans to develop these this year. As well as the St Columba website, we are including some other chant blogs and one or two American sites. All these are in the newly-titled Information and Resources section of this page.
  
  
• OFFICIALLY APPROVED MASS SETTINGS We are finding that more and more parishes are looking for Mass music which has been officially approved for publication in its country of origin. There has also been correspondence recently in the Scottish Catholic Observer about promoting Scottish resources.
  
  Forth in Praise has re-ordered its Selection of Mass Settings section and will pass on all further information on this subject which we can. Here are one or two items which have come our way:
  
  World-wide information
  • Forth in Praise, in the Other Countries section of this page, gives links to the bishops' websites of several English-speaking countries.
  • The Acolyte's Tale, an information blog, goes further, and its list of countries and their approved settings is a very useful resource.
  
  Scottish settings, in addition to those listed at Roman Missal Scotland
  • A complete new Mass setting, the Holy Trinity Mass by Harry McFarlane, was approved by the Scottish publication approval committee and is to be published by Decani Music. More information about this can be found on the music website of Galloway Diocese.
  • Eugene Burns’s approved St Magdalene Gloria, an easy setting which is freely available here, has now acquired a downloadable audio file.
    
    
  • Please let us know if you have had Mass music officially approved, and we will link to it on our list of settings.
    
    
• NEWSLETTERS Newsletter 21, issued in December, has now been uploaded to the Newsletter Page. If you would like to receive our newsletters by email as they come out, please contact massmusic@forthinpraise.
  
  
• AND FINALLY - not Mass music news, strictly speaking, but as it's Evelyn's own parish ...
  Two charity concerts are to be given in the spring by Linlithgow cantor Justine Riccomini. More details on our Events Page.

• ACADEMY OF SACRED MUSIC James MacMillan is the patron of this new educational organisation, founded by Joan Dillon, and launched last month in Glasgow, with the object of raising the standards and quality of Christian church music. The Academy's website gives full information.


• IRISH MASS MUSIC A very kind friend has made me a present of the Irish Sing the Mass book, published by Veritas, which contains new liturgy Mass settings approved by the Church in Ireland. The accompaniment volume is spiral bound for easy opening at the organ and includes a CD-ROM with images of the melody version. There is a wealth of Irish settings, including the Glendalough Mass, which is already becoming popular here. A real find is the revised French Lourdes Mass. It so happens that I had been hunting for a revision of the Lourdes Gloria; I had thought the four melody lines of the verses of the old one would adapt quite easily to the new text. And indeed they do. More about this book can be found at the Veritas website.


• A NEW AND EASY GLORIA On the Scottish front, Forth in Praise has been asked to link to a new Gloria, the St Magdalene Gloria by Eugene Burns, which has recently passed the Scottish approval committee and is freely available for download here. Although this is a refrain Gloria, the chanted verses would be easy for the people to pick up, and Eugene has kindly given permission for melody copies to be made for the whole congregation.


• CALLING SCOTTISH COMPOSERS! If there are any other Scottish composers out there who have new liturgy Mass music on their blog or website, please get in touch with us at massmusic@forthinpraise.co.uk. We will be pleased to link to your music.


• CHRISTMAS And finally, the choir in Linlithgow has hauled out and dusted off my own Christmas Carol Mass, which we did last year. Looking back, I would think the Sanctus is the most successful part of this setting, and the Agnus Dei the least. The Gloria is a bit tricky, but great fun. You can find the setting here.


• Previous news updates can be found here.

• A WORKSHOP FOR COMPOSERS, to help those who wish to set the texts of the NEW LITURGY, will be held on 3 November 2012 in St Michael’s Church, Blackness Road, Linlithgow. It will be led by Robin Bell, BMus, ARCO, ARSCM, who teaches composition at all levels in a secondary school. This workshop is especially for composers with little music theory training, or those whose theory is in need of revision. More details on our Events page.


• On the subject of composing for the new liturgy, we would like to draw your attention to two useful links on the website of the English Liturgy Office, here and here. The Composers’ Workshop will be drawing on some of this material, and are indebted to those who have posted it.


• The Forth in Praise website has been slightly re-organised. The staff notation accompaniments to the ICEL chant have been moved to our Downloads and Publications page from the more technical Playing the Organ page. Statistics show that these really easy accompaniments are popular, and not only with beginners, as the most recent comment on the blog shows. Guitarists have also found the chords version handy.


• Time and space constraints have meant, sadly, that we have had to take down the 'Edinburgh' page. Contact details for the two composers featured on it, Tony Giovanazzi and John McLean, have been moved to the new settings list on this page.


• The autumn Archdiocesan Music Newsletter will be issued shortly. Most people now receive it by email. If you would like to be on our email mailing list please contact us at massmusic@forthinpraise.co.uk .



NEWS UPDATE 23 AUGUST 2012

James MacMillan's St Anne Mass has been adopted by the Diocese of Westminster as their preferred setting. Many of us already know the old-liturgy St Anne Sanctus from our hymn books, and some of us also know the lovely Agnus Dei, which seemed to appear, strangely, only in the current Church of Scotland hymnary (CH4). Now the whole setting, updated for the present liturgy and with a new Gloria, is available from publisher Boosey & Hawkes. ICEL chant. An easier-to-read version of the ICEL chant can be downloaded from the Australian bishops' website. More details on our own Organists' Blog. Process for permission to publish settings of the liturgical texts. A request to Bishop Toal asking for clarification of some aspects of the approval process was recently sent by Evelyn Stell in her capacity as convener of the Liturgy Commission Music Advisory Group for our archdiocese. An email update giving details of this request and the response to it will be sent out shortly. If you would like to be on the mailing list for this and other email updates, please contact us at massmusic@forthinpraise.co.uk Edinburgh page. Some of the pages of this website will be closing down soon, due to time and webspace constraints. Among them will be the Edinburgh page, on which we have been posting graphics files of locally-composed music. We still want to continue our policy of promoting music by archdiocesan composers, so will be happy to link to composers' own websites. If you haven't got your own website, why don't you set up a blog with one of the major blog-hosting websites? It isn't difficult, and is usually free of charge.

NEWS UPDATE 25 JULY 2012

The Mass of St Francis, by Australian composer Paul Taylor and published by the Archdiocese of Melbourne, is now online. The setting, which has been approved by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Commission for Liturgy, can be found here. There are also helpful audio files. Those who came to the Linlithgow Singing Day on 19 May will remember that we went over the Sanctus and Memorial Acclamations from this pleasant and easy-to-learn Mass setting, and Forth in Praise has since had enquiries from parishes about obtaining the other parts of the setting. The people’s version and a full music version can be freely downloaded and used within a single parish, although any further copying would have to be licensed (details are given on the website). This means that you are allowed to make melody copies for your entire congregation, which is extremely generous of the composer and the publisher. Own parish use of new Mass music Following a clarification enquiry it has been confirmed that you do NOT need permission from an approval committee if you are using your own music in your own community. It is only if you want to have it published that you have to seek approval. This applies in Scotland and England. Other countries may be different.





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