Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Colin Mawby on the new Missal texts and censorship

This is part of the talk Colin Mawby gave at the Gregorian Chant Network weekend course, 9th April this year.



It has been on Gloria TV for a bit and Fr Andrew Wadsworth, who works for ICEL, has commented:

Mr Mawby unhelpfully conflates two different considerations: the responsibility of Bishops' Conferences to regulate the publication of music to be used in the celebration of the Mass and the function of ICEL to maintain the integrity of liturgical texts in English and to administer the copyright of such texts on behalf of the Conferences. It is idealistic to imagine that the complex, lengthy and costly process whereby English translations are made and approved could be funded by individual Conferences when the reality of the situation is that the income from such copyright enables the subsidy of the production of liturgical books in those parts of the world where publication would not otherwise be possible.

I'm glad to say I don't have a dog in this fight; the whole thing just seems a bit rum, and I'm very grateful to be using musical materials which are in the public domain.

One of the really handy things about the Old Mass is that vast amounts of the text, in Latin and in various translations, on online. Try finding the Latin texts of the propers of the 1970 Missal and you quickly run into a brick wall. Using copyrighted compositions, too, can be a pain, but anyone wanting to use Chant can download several different editions of the chant for the Mass for free, thanks to the Church Music Association of America. The polyphonists of the Schola Abelis have been known to edit their own texts of the music they want directly from the sources.

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