ODAY WE RELEASE “installment 2” in the new series called How Has Nobody Done This Before? This series features hundreds of rehearsal videos—for each individual singer’s voice part—of the world’s greatest hymns. The entire project can be accessed completely free of charge at this website (scroll towards the middle section). It’s so useful to be able to send your choir members to a website containing individual voice parts, while knowing the hymn texts (lyrics) and the hymn notes (harmonies) have not been tampered with.
Glenn Gould’s Favorite: Today we feature Glenn Gould’s favorite composer: ORLANDO GIBBONS. Let’s start with Brébeuf #715, which is a Roman Catholic text (Adesto Pater Domine) translated into English by a Catholic poet named Alan Gordon McDougall (whose work Father Adrian Fortescue admired):
Common Tunes: What makes the Brébeuf hymnal so powerful is its use of “common tunes.” That means you can teach your choir #715 (above) and they already know a bunch more hymns. For example, they already know this hymn to Saint Joseph, whose text was written by an FSSP priest:
…and they’ll automatically know this hymn for Lent:
…and here’s another Lenten hymn they will know automatically:
HE new publication by Sophia Institute Press (Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal) is quite different than other Catholic hymnals currently available. Unlike other “Catholic” hymnals, it refused to mimic or “build upon” Protestant models. The hymnal is Catholic to its core. To find something similar, you’d have to go back seventy years to the New Westminster Hymnal, which was (generally speaking) the work of Monsignor Ronald Knox and Dom Gregory Murray.
Here are some examples demonstrating how this melody by Orlando Gibbons was adopted by serious Catholic hymnals, even though Gibbons was not a Catholic:
* PDF Download • “How It Used To Look”
—Notice how the editors chose a hymn to the Holy Ghost, just like the Brébeuf hymnal.
* PDF Download • “New Saint Basil Hymnal”
—Notice how the editors chose a hymn to the Holy Ghost, just like the Brébeuf hymnal.
* PDF Download • Theodore Marier
—Dr. Marier used this Gibbons tune at least three times in his hymnal.
* PDF Download • “New Westminster Hymnal”
—Dom Gregory Murray and Msgr. Ronald Knox were its main creators.
* PDF Download • “The Catholic Hymn Book”
—Produced by the London Oratory circa 1998.
