Scriptorium Mariae

OLDMy Gregorian Chant Web Page

This Page is Old, no longer maintained, possibly obsolete. Please try Swell the Mighty Flood or my Sheet Music Collection page.

I leave this page up for Old Times' Sake.

Hymnbooks | Compline | Marian Antiphons | Mass booklets | Kyriale | Contact me

What's new?

A New Book of Old Hymns The New Book of Old Hymns has been revised with the prayer for the Pope updated to Benedict with a picture by Peter Brandt to match. The licence terms are very flexible to encourage you to take the source(386k) and make your own hymnbook to suit the needs of your parish/choir/gregorian chant fan club. The Lulu website does label the book as Standard Copyright. That's because last time I updated it I couldn't seem to select Custom Licence. I am still keen to see people modify this book to suit their needs.

If you think you would like to have a go at typing gregorian chant yourself you might like to try: How to Install and Use OpusTeX. To get you started with some examples you can see the proclamation of moveable feasts page which has pdfs and source code for each year since 2003.


Scriptorium Mariae

This Page is Old, no longer maintained, possibly obsolete. Please try Swell the Mighty Flood or my Sheet Music Collection page.

Here you can find a collection of gregorian chant and other old church music in ready for you to download and print. I try to keep it up to date and error free. My email address is at the bottom of the page.

One unusual thing about this collection is that it is the result of many hours of unpaid voluntary work - mine least of all. The software is based on TeX, a state of the art computer typesetting program. It is also possibly the most bug-free computer program ever. There's a handsome reward available for any bugs found in the program. However TeX by itself doesn't do music. There are extensions, also written by volunteers, also free. I use OpusTeX. Because OpusTeX is primarily developed in German I've written a page describing how to set up and use OpusTeX.

I have endeavoured to make sure all the music here is out of copyright. Another collection of free music to download is the Werner Icking Music Archive. I have a piece there too -- O Esca Viatorum, Anon.

In a similar vein there are mp3s available from a Spanish group called Gregorian Sense. The recordings are solos provided as a guide to the chant. I have heard that the speed of the singing should be about the same if you were to say the words clearly. They have sought to let the words guide the music, which is why Gregorian Chant is the official music of the Roman Catholic Church (yes, Vatican II says so).

Another source of free mp3s is the Monastery of St Benedict in Sao Paolo, Brazil. They're recordings made in the church, so it sounds much better. They also seem to have a very comprehensive coverage of all the music you'll hear around the year on Sundays. They cover much of the content in the New Book of Old Hymns, see below.

Pilgrimage Books

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The Pilgrim's Primer, for Bl. Mary MacKillop 2003 - 44 pages jammed with hymns for a pilgrimage. The original book is here: pilgrim.ps.gz (~180k) In 2003 I had trouble with mktexpk generating the different size fonts - since then I've learnt how to generate the required fonts with metafont. Also since then I've fixed up a few hymns, added a bit here, taken a bit there so now that I can generate a pdf file its a bit different. All the same hymns are there, but the page numbering is a bit different. So the 2004 revision is here: pilgrim.pdf (~300k). For a peek at the list of contents try pilgrim.txt. The source can be found in hymnbook.tar.gz by compiling pilgrim.tex.

Kyriale

This Page is Old, no longer maintained, possibly obsolete. Please try Swell the Mighty Flood or my Sheet Music Collection page.

The Christus Rex Pilgrimage gave the incentive to get some more Masses done, so here is an extract from the Pilgrim's Primer with Masses 2, 4, 9 and 10 plus Credos 1 and 3. Thank you to my mother, Teresa, who typed up much of this.

kyriale.pdf (111k)

For the latest on the Christus Rex Pilgrims Primer see the new Primer Page

Mass booklets

This Page is Old, no longer maintained, possibly obsolete. Please try Swell the Mighty Flood or my Sheet Music Collection page.

Little booklet of the parts of the Mass for a votive mass of Our Lady Help of Christians. This mass was said on the 25th of June, 2005 at St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. Though not overly publicised the Mass was attended by over 600 people. It was the first Traditional Latin Mass to be held at the High Altar in many many many years. The booklet includes the Propers for the Mass Salve Sancta Parens, the ordinaries for Mass IX, (Missa cum jubilo) plus the hymns Soul of my Saviour, Adoro te and Sub tuum praesidium.

saturday.pdf - 222k

saturday.zip - 72k

On a technical note the booklet was set using TeX and OpusTeX rather than using extended TeX or LaTeX. The page width was set to 106mm, and height 180mm and arranged on a5 pages. I'm very happy with these dimensions, 100mm (used in the hymnbooks) was a bit narrow and 120mm (used in the Christus Rex Pilgrimage) too wide.

Ite Missa Est cards in Postscript for the people and for the altar.

Divine Office

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Little booklet of Monastic Marian Antiphons - solemn tone.

Last updated 26/8/02. Comments, suggestions, corrections most welcome.

Monastic Compline:

This Page is Old, no longer maintained, possibly obsolete. Please try Swell the Mighty Flood or my Sheet Music Collection page.

Last updated 14/04/04. Comments, suggestions, corrections most welcome.

Learn to typeset Gregorian Chant! Here's a Quick Reference Guide I wrote for using OpusTeX's Gregorian Chant Package.

  1. quickref.tex
  2. quickref.ps
  3. quickref.pdf

This Page is Old, no longer maintained, possibly obsolete. Please try Swell the Mighty Flood or my Sheet Music Collection page.

Any comments, questions, queries, criticisms or large sums of money most gratefully received. You contact meby email (address at the bottom of this page) or by this handy form.


veronica@brandt.id.au

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Last modified: Wed Sep 3 10:53:34 EST 2003