![Views from the Choir Loft](https://www.ccwatershed.org/wp-content/themes/jeandelalande/images/blueheader.png")
HANKS to Corpus Christi Watershed, many Catholic hymnals have been made available for free & instant download. Several of these—such as Westminster’s DAILY HYMN BOOK—are incredibly valuable. Others are interesting mainly from a historical point of view. 1
The following probably falls into the latter category, but I still think you’ll enjoy it:
* * PDF • CANTATE OMNES HYMNAL (1952)
Will you help us continue our work? I have more hymnals I’d like to upload—including rare English hymnals I bet you’ve never seen—but we need your help.
A young lady here in Los Angeles is willing to scan these books, but I can’t ask her to do it for free.
There’s a $5.00-per-month, $7.00-per-month, $10.00-per-month, and so forth.
Of course hymnals are only part of our work. None of our contributors—including myself—is paid a salary. But when our website malfunctions (for example) that costs money. You already know about the wonderful blog articles by our authors and probably noticed improvements to GoupilChant. However, there’s another project I’d like to complete if we can get enough monthly donors, and I just know you’ll love it! (That’s all I can reveal at this time.)
ALLOW ME TO MENTION just one more project. We’ve been creating rehearsal videos—about 25 so far—to assist choirs. Our goal is to eventually create about 150. To demonstrate what I mean, let me show you a lovely piece by (surprise!) Fr. Carlo Rossini:
* * PDF Download • Rev. Carlo Rossini “VERBUM SUPERNUM”
If you don’t like the breath marks, you can ignore them. 2
NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:
1 The group who created the Cantate Omnes Hymnal still exists, and asserts on their website: “In the 1950s, our founders published the Cantate Omnes Hymnal—the first vernacular hymnal for Catholics in the United States.” In light of the link I mentioned above, this statement is absurd.
2 Anyone who has ever directed choirs in real life realizes there’s no such thing as “correct” breath marks. Breaths will depend on numerous factors: skill of the singers; acoustics of the building; tempo; contrapuntal considerations; number of singers; and so forth. A great singer like Matthew J. Curtis is capable of things an amateur singer is not. It’s kind of like the edition of Bach containing fingerings by Hans Bischoff. These can be quite valuable; yet some pianists ignore them—and that’s just fine.
