How to Steward the Treasury of Catholic Music with Andrew

The two functions of Catholic musicians are to (1) Preserve and foster the treasury of sacred music with great care, and (2) increase its store of treasures. In this video and article, we provide a place from which Catholic musicians can begin to more deeply understand the breadth of the treasury of Catholic music (liturgical, devotional, and transcendental-secular).

Below is a list of resources to begin to explore this treasury.

Resources

Source & Summit: Online platform and printed missal; hyper customizable with worship aid exporting ability. Annual subscription for a parish.

CCWatershed: Free online platform that has thousands of scores and resources available. They also published the Brebuef Hymnal, a phenomenal resource that takes ancient Catholic texts and sets them to multiple tunes each.

Canticanova: Free online platform that lists possible traditional selections for every Sunday and feast for both ordinary form and extraordinary form

Gregobase: Free online platform that hosts thousands of gregorian chant scores, and allows you to download for worship aids.

Parish Book of Chant: Free online book (and print book) that you can use to learn the essentials of gregorian chant.

Worship Now: A praise and worship hymnal, with the verses in lyric form and the refrain in congregational singing form. A weekly email suggestion for contemporary music and hymns.

Catholic Music Initiative: A wealth of resources for parishes on a subscription platform. Psalms, hyper-flexible Mass settings for a variety of styles, and lots more!

CCLI SongSelect: A subscription platform for praise & worship chord charts and lead sheets with the ability to easily change the key. A great FREE liturgy planning tool as well.

Francesa LaRosa: An independent Catholic composer who wrote a beautiful 3-year cycle of Psalms.

Praise Charts: A non-subscription place to get chord charts, leadsheets, and sheet music for praise and worship music.

MuseScore: A subscription and non-subscription place to get chord charts, leadsheets, and sheet music for wide variety of music

Hymnary: A great free resource for researching hymns by their text and meter. There is a wealth of information here, and a great destination to look for old hymns and texts that might need a revival with new compositions. Ability to search by meter… so you can change the tune of a hymn you’re currently using.

CPDL: Free public domain choral library; thousands of scores here, from polyphony to modern music.

IMSLP: Free public domain library of instrumental music; thousands of classical music scores here.

VIGIL Publishing: Contemporary devotional music by The Vigil Project, the creators and hosts of this Catholic Musician Community.