Ritual Song: A Hymnal and Service Book for Roman Catholics

By: Haugen, Marty

Book Overview

New Hardcover (as shown) "Ritual Song: A Hymnal and Service Book for Roman Catholics" minor shelf wear. Fast shipping...(A14) This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941050858
• ISBN13: 9780941050852
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: GIA Publications
• Length: 500 Pages
• Weight: 3.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A View From A Prot

.This Catholic hymnal comes from GIA Publishers of Bedford Park, Illinois, a modest light-industrial suburb bordering the far south side of Chicago. G I A Publishers the company is a most amazing venture, as it has more or less redefined the Roman Catholic hymnary/hymnal genre to fit the post-Vatican II liturgical climate. (They also stock Taize CD's by the boatload.) Previously, most publishers (with a number of exceptions) would put their sung congregational hymns in the context of hymnarys or missals (or even small paperback, staple-bound throwaway mini-missals that were destined to be tossed after a particular liturgical season was over). In other words, the congregation pew racks contained--if they contained anything at all--service music that happened to have some hymns. G I A came along during the 1980s with its seminal WORSHIP series (now in its third edition, with another coming soon), and its hymnal--while still liturgically useful as to antiphons and service music--is pretty much the ultimate in pew-friendliness for the congregation. WORSHIP has hymns, and those tending toward a "high church" tradition, which are compatible with a large, organ-and-choir type of worship music.Some contexting is in order for my fellow non-R.C.'s: singing of hymn "tunes" by the congregation pre Vatican II in the 1960s was more the exception than the rule. But in the post-Vatican II climate, following the exemplary success of WORSHIP, the smaller, folksier and/or more liturgically modern congregations demanded a similar book of liturgy, worship and praise. A pew book that would suit, say, worship with a small or no choir: perhaps just a piano or guitar or mixed strings, with perhaps a cantor to lead congregational singing. The result is 1996's RITUAL SONG, and it's a beauty. It is modern (Marty Haugen has over 100 entries in the book) but it also represents the full panoply of Western Christian music, both R.C. and non. In this book you'll find the 18th Century Methodist tune DUKE STREET ("I Know that My Redeemer Lives"), Taize chants ("Jesus, Remember Me, When You Come Into Your Kingdom"), holiday standards like "The First Nowell" and "Come, You Thankful People Come," the Psalms set to music; yet tradition is not ignored (see "Regina Coeli" for example.) This is a wonderful hymnal and deserves its ongoing success. In fact, even Protestants would find it quite useful, about its only drawback for the more tuneful denominations being that it is scored for unison, not four-part S-A-T-B as are most Protestant hymnals. Upon the success of the WORSHIP series, and this RITUAL SONG, the cry went out for a synthesis of both. That was GATHER COMPREHENSIVE, but that's a different review . . . ;)