OUGHLY four years ago, a revolutionary resource came out on the sacred music market through Ignatius Press. This resource, The Proper of the Mass for Sundays and Solemnities, is the handiwork of Fr. Samuel Weber, OSB. At the time, the contributors to this Views from the Choir Loft blog published a seven-part series reflecting on the content and impact of this book (the first part of the series is available here, with links to the subsequent posts).
This important volume continues to be sold online (available here).
Only recently did I discover that there is also a very useful website dedicated to Fr. Weber’s music. This webpage is stuffed with great resources, categorized according to season and other criteria (e.g., Spanish, Divine Office, Carmelite, etc.).
Given the present time of year, I would draw our readers’ particular attention to the music for Holy Week and for Easter.
In my own contribution to our seven-part series on Fr. Weber’s book back in 2015, I wrote this:
With the publication of The Proper of the Mass, parish priests & musicians are running out of excuses for not singing the music of the Mass, including the appointed propers. Immediately after the Second Vatican Council, there was a legitimate lack of resources, so parishes could reasonably be excused for falling into a bit of a tailspin. But now the resources are available in the Anglophone world, and there is no longer any legitimate excuse for avoiding them, apart from an entrenched desire to “stay at rest” or to hold on to “what is old in us” or to resist “newness of life.”
What I said then I believe still stands. We are fortunate to be laboring during a time in which resources for authentic sacred music are abundant.
