We’ve heard constantly for decades about how unredeemed the preconciliar past is, and yet sometimes I receive correspondence that remind me of what was and what might have been. An example:
Regading the congregation singing the Orsinary, when I was the organist and school music teacher at St. Rose chrch in Meriden, CT, the whole congregaiton sang the chant Ordinary, my 40-boy-choir processed, vested, with the celebrant, and the junior high school girls choir sang the Propers.
You have given me fond memopries of what Dr. Clifford Bennett, president of the Gregorian Institute of American was trying to do around this country in 1948 when I joined him as his New England Representative.
By the way, the Gregorian Institute of America is now generally described as the GIA, a for-profit publisher that gladly sells chant books but publishes next to nothing that touches on Gregorian themes and is now charged with collecting money for the right to sing the Psalms in English.
Shame to see the same old same old on the subject of GIA, Jeffrey. I thought you might have left that behind! Galatians 5:14-15 is good advice.
What Jeffrey says is accurate and not even mean-spirited. Is there a problem with the truth?
There is never a problem with the truth!
Hats off to GIA for publishing such excellent psalm books.
John, the "Psalm book" in question is not yet published.
And Cop, to enforce a restrictive copyright in order to extract revenue from the faithful who want to sing the words of scripture is not very sporting.
Copernicus,
I'm surprised by your comment – surely you understand that the imperative to love one another doesn't preclude condemnation of the status quo where its actions warrant it. To suggest otherwise is to hand a 'get out of gaol free' card to power.
Sadly, another aspect of ths status quo is the simmering resentment in many quarters toward Catholic music publishing, and the ICEL/Vox Clara dictatorship.
As a friend, I hear and appreciate Jeffrey's frustration. But let's be honest: it shows. Big time. Look at his adverbs. Look at the emphasis on his own objections as he makes his argument.
As long as he and others set themselves up in adversarial situations, nothing much constructive will result. (And remember, this is the pot speaking here.)
I've had personal experience with both publishers and with ICEL, and I've found them very receptive to my inquiries, requests, and such. I once published a music book and ICEL waived royalties for my purpose.
So, Ian, do you think my counter-criticism falls into your imperative? If not, why not? And if so, how do Catholics move off square one?
Todd,
You seem to be saying that Jeffrey’s manner of criticism is self defeating. That doesn’t address the imperative to speak truth to power, and your anecdotal evidence of the benefits of speaking softly to it merely suggest that an ecclesiastical part of it may be inclined to bountiful graciousness on a particular occasion, without in any way giving ground on the principle. The criticism in this post, moreover, was of the arrangement under which our patrimony has been delivered into the hands of a commercial organisation. It’s reasonable to assume that a for-profit company will be less inclined to make exceptions than ICEL.
Anyway, I think that you and my friend Copernicus are over-reacting to criticism of this grubby money-making arrangement. Jeffrey’s the soul of tact compared with one zealot I could name.
Thanks for responding Ian. I think Jeffrey's manner of criticism is what politicians call "appealing to the base." I doubt he is even on "power's" radar. And he's sure as heckfire isn't "speaking to it" on his blog. That said, I'm not entirely unsympathetic.
I think it's less a matter of speaking softly in my case than I've found ICEL and publishers generally cooperative when I've looked for collaboration or help with unusual tasks. Granted, Jeffrey and I have different things we're hoping to "get" out of our respective relationships with these people. Maybe he'd get more traction with a different approach. On the other hand, it feels good to vent.
As a matter of fact, I haven't found the profit motive in religious publishers to be really a problem. I suppose there's always OCP if you want a non-profit to deal with.
It's curious that a person like me who is far more suspicious of the profit motive of big corporations would be defending what is essentially a small business operation here. The truth of it is that ICEL and publishers have performed "work" here. Jeffrey seems to be insisting it be distributed more or less free because we more or less need it to sing the liturgy the way we want to sing it. That's simply not the Western model of operation in the 21st century.
Between you, me, and Jeffrey, I wouldn't mind operating in a more hybrid system: maybe a patron or two giving me two months off in a cottage by the sea to help me finish a big musical project or two. But the fact of the situation is that I have a church job, plus some writing and musical gigs on the side, and I just can't afford to take a chunk of time off to do what I want.
That's mainly why I'm more willing to give this bandwagon a push now and then; I'm just not excited about jumping onboard.
So again I ask: what would you suggest be done to move past this impasse?
There's a good and lengthy discussion over on Pray Tell, and no need to rehearse the details here. I can see that extracting revenue from the faithful who want to sing the words of scripture is only one model for ensuring just treatment of the workman worthy of his hire; but it wasn't invented by GIA, nor is it monopolised by them. And, pace your evidently strong feelings, Jeffrey, I don't know of a reason to assume bad faith on their part.
"be distributed more or less free"
That's not what I'm saying, not at all. It's fine to sell stuff. That's what companies do every day. Think of the jeans you buy, the tie you wear, the coat you own, the khakis you purchase – none are under "copyright" and the companies still make a buck. Same with restaurants, which do not copyright their recipes. Anyone is free to copy any of the stuff. What I'm objecting to is the use of the state to maintain an artificial monopoly on the texts themselves, which amounts to the use of coercion against non-monopolists, a form of taxation for praying through song.
The taxation is not for praying, but for making copies.
Also, the problem with abusive monopolies is that they overcharge for goods and services. I've not seen any music publisher charge beyond fairness. Just today I purchased the right to print Taize music in a booklet we're producing. $24 for a book that will last two to three years, maybe more.
Just what is it that you object to, other than you have to do business with GIA?
I don't see anything fair about charging (and by charging I mean forcibly preventing non-payers from using the text) for printing something that is a) infinitely reproducable by its nature, b) belongs by right to the whole of the faithful and the whole world, and c) a specifically indulgenced text for use in the holy act of worship and praise. But I've explained this all again and again at impossible length, so I don't want to reprint all this here.
By the way, I'm in no way hitting GIA as some personal campaign. I've never had anything but excellent service from this company. Moreover, I have many friends who work at OCP, which is staffed with some great musicians and nice people. I'm on good terms with people at WLP and LitPress, etc. etc. I do not like GIA's secrecy and lack of transparency and the way it has positioned itself in this Grail controversy but there is nothing personal here. It is a matter of justice.
I too am becoming skeptical about the claim that pre-conciliar parishes rarely sang that ordinary and propers–that low masses with hymns were the norm. I used to believe it–after all, I wasn't alive then, and so many apparently intelligent and informed people say that that's how things were. But, having met, in the last few years, a good number of people who did attend mass in the US in those days, I have yet to meet one who wasn't amused by the idea that they didn't sing the ordinary and propers. True, they didn't always sing the propers from the liber usualis–often they sang some simpler setting; and, they may very well have been too reliant on the de angelis ordinary, but they sang the mass.
Okay. Thanks for the clarification.
The truth of it is that you and I can compose settings of this text–as much as we like. And nobody can stop us. We can probably even have our choirs sing it, and we won't be charged. So there is no prevention on anyone's part.
What is unethical is to profit from a collaboration without sharing. Once we go public for-profit on our own (and that includes those of us who collect income for our web sites or organizations) we are obliged to share.
Todd,
You’ve raised a number of different issues, directly and indirectly, so please forgive the length of my response.
Yes, we can compose Grail psalm settings and have our choirs sing them, but I believe it would be a different matter if we wished to post them online – say, here, or on a site specifically designed to provide free liturgical music. If the one is just then so is the other (and the reverse is true, too, however small the sum required by the copyright owner or farmer).
That still leaves the workman’s wages point, but it would be entirely possible for the relevant Bishops’ conferences to pay the Grail a decent sum, either as a one-off or on a regular basis. Either that, or have them commission groups or individuals to do the translation on their behalf. Neither option would involve ongoing constraints on the freedom of the faithful to make use of liturgical texts, which are by their nature as such different in kind from other texts: they are the common patrimony of the people of God. These aren’t radical ideas – they’re how things were done until recently and how they are still done in various ecclesial communities. It’s essentially what you suggest in your ‘hybrid model’, and it might well have earned The Grail better wages for its work.
Once granted that liturgical texts are our common patrimony, there is no ‘obligation to share’ the proceeds of sales of original musical settings of them. What is being sold is the setting, not the text (though there is an interesting issue to explore here, given the Second Vatican Council’s insight that liturgical music becomes part of the liturgy, rather than an adornment of it). So too, payment for hard-copy of text and music is fair payment for scarce material and convenience.
Finally, how do we get this unfortunate situation changed for the better? I don’t think any single approach will be sufficient in itself, and each approach has its own risk. There is room for righteous indignation and vocal campaigning against a model that approaches the borders of simony, just as there is for education of and negotiation with those unwittingly responsible for it, or just caught up in it. The free software campaigns are a useful secular model. They have benefitted from single-minded purists like Richard Stallman and the open source pragmatists who’ve worked with the hardware and software corporations. In our world there are dangers with either approach. Anger can degenerate into lovelessness, though I don’t see that in anything Jeffrey has written. Soft words and negotiation can slip into an easy disregard for principle. I don’t see that in your comments, but it is a failing to which the Catholic Church – the world’s oldest and most successful bureaucracy – is susceptible, no matter the liturgical or theological position of those involved. I would suggest we’re at the stage where those with an interest are beginning to hear the voices in the wilderness. Now isn’t the time for them to tone down to a whisper.
Ian, thanks for the reply. Mine will be brief. When I asked ICEL about making my musical settings available online, they asked if my web site was for-profit in any way.
In sum, I was told that if I sold no advertising and gained no income from my site, I could post my settings of ICEL texts as long as I complied with attributing source and copyright. And if I later earned income from my web site, I could communicate that and we would negotiate compensation.
GIA is a different matter, and I have yet to experience how they will administer the psalms, which is of more interest to me since in twenty-five years, I've written far more psalm settings (about 200) than individual Mass parts (about forty).
My sense is that the adversarial stance is premature. I know that CMAA does earn a gross profit from memberships, workshops, etc.. They also sell books. Not a huge money-making endeavor, but in the big picture, neither is GIA.
I come to this discussion as a CMAA outsider, but with my own experiences and relationships with some of these players. I agree that different approaches can be considered at this stage. Jeffrey is enough of a friend for me to suggest that he needs different approaches, too.
It really isn't about who is naughty and who is nice. Neither is it about who is and isn't making money (I'm all for wealth.) It is about the institutional conditions under which publication occurs. As a matter of principle, the CMAA publishes only into the commons. We will not use the police power to restrict people's rights, period.
Publishers don't use police power either. They do use lawyers, with whom disputes like this usually get settled. Publishers also have that long institutional memory of a Chicago archbishop who defended mimeographing songs, and then instructed his parishes to boycott a publisher for being uppity enough to insist on payment.
Jeffrey, you can't expect to get traction on this by conjuring images of blue uniforms with billy clubs smashing filing cabinets of chant. This is just fantasy, my friend.
The publisher in question declared bankruptcy. Couldn't pay the legal bills.
Jeffrey, you can't expect to get traction on this by conjuring images of blue uniforms with billy clubs smashing filing cabinets of chant.
What a shame that you can't keep to the point, Todd. It's very diassapointing.
Ian, this is exactly my point: Jeffrey is exaggerating. There is no police power in play here, only differences of opinion on the ideal accessibility to liturgical texts, especially when one or more parties stand to profit or invest resources.
Honestly, I'm sympathetic to what Jeffrey's trying to accomplish here. He knows I'm probably 80% with him.
That FEL declared bankruptcy is part of what drove the mania about copyright from the Catholic publishers over the past thirty-some years. Can we acknowledge everybody's skittish over the issue and tread carefully, not for the purpose of being nice, but to make sure people understand one another?
Todd …
What exactly are the lawyers arguing in such a case? They are arguing the LAW. How is that law enforced? By the policing power (not cops…the power of the state to exact monetary and or punitive penalties from an individual for violation of laws) of the state. There are no Blue Shirts…just letters that you owe huge sums of money or face further penalties.
Actually, Todd, I'm afraid you're both exagerating and missing the point. Jeffrey didn't conjure up such images, and the debate isn't a pragmatic one between shades of similar opinion, but one of principle about whether the Church has any business making novel arrangements that result in legal constraints on what the faithful may do with the unaltered English text of the liturgy (and in the case of the psalms, putting those constraints into the hands of an extra-ecclesiastical body). Even if you don't agree with Jeffrey's position, it isn't difficult to see the distinction between it and a pragmatic approach.
"Huge" sums of money? For church musicians with a handful to dozens of downloads? When was the last time this happened?
Jeffrey was the one who first used the phrase "police power." The police don't send letters demanding payment. That said, I've tried to elicit from Jeffrey exactly what is oppressive here.
I think that for me, this thread has reached a point of uselessness. I'm just going to reiterate I sympathize with Jeffrey's frustration about the GIA/Grail situation. But also, I have found neither ICEL nor any of the main publishers to be closed to my using their resources, sometimes free, and sometimes for a modest fee. I've found them more than cooperative, even when my requests were outside of the usual ones they receive.
Distinctions between singing, printing, collaborating, and financing are important to make. I didn't always see that happen in this thread. Good day, friends.
Todd,
I'm still dissapointed – I had hoped that you'd grasp and debate the various points made. As you don't seem inclined to do so, I can but agree with your assessment of the thread's value to you.