The Recovering Choir Director

Here’s another idea for a Catholic hacker (or more realistically, a consortium of hackers, musicians, and musician-hackers).

Bill White has given me the link to his ongoing cal-catholic liturgical calendar project. Now, I have some (not all) propers to the 1974 Graduale Romanum on this domain. Links to recordings at ChristusRex can be found there as well. The project has been inactive for some time, partly because I think it can be done better than I’ve currently been doing it.

Here’s how.

What if an online application were created that would:

1. provide chant melodies in both square and modern notation (antiphons, psalm tones, etc.);
2. provide translations in English (either linked or inline), and perhaps other languages;
3. provide representative recordings of the chants;
4. comprehensively index the texts of the chants into a searchable database;
5. provide hyperlinked liturgical calendars (1962 and 1970) that would point to printable propers for every day of the year; and
6. be sustained by donations?

Again, I can’t deal with the details, but this would be an awesome, time-consuming, and ultimately rewarding project. Especially if donated to, say, the USCCB or the Vatican’s Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. One thing for certain, this would be too much work for only one hacker. You heard the idea here first, though. Spread the word.