I’ve been looking again at the original AOV collections published by Willow. I assumed that since I’ve been regularly playing at mass since the last millenium I’d pretty much know them all, but as it happens I don’t. I’m not sure why some were in and some out locally, but I know that the parish bought them very early on, long before my time, and I gather there are still lots of copies of the pew versions from before we used overheads somewhere about the church. I’d like to make backings to learn for myself the ones that didn’t catch on to see if we are missing some gems, and have a fresh look at some old warhorses to see if they can be rehabilitated.
If you think these books are ancient history, read Dr Paul Taylor’s excellent PhD thesis. (Yes the nice young man who wrote that mass.) Apart from looking at chant he does a lot of basic research and tabulates the collections of music being used in parishes and so even if you could care less whether chant is thriving or not, it is worth reading for the background research. AOV is the most modern collection out there and hasn’t even reached a lot of parishes. It is still available at the AOV website. (ie buy the thing if you don’t own a copy.) If you just want a pew version, they regularly turn up at the huge Lifeline booksales in Brisbane.
I have a unique two volume guitar version of AOV that is not for sale. My guitar edition Vol 1&2 was used until it fell apart, so I repaired it into two separate volumes. It cost me only $20 years ago on special, so it was a real bargain.
The original AOV has more liturgical music than the Next Gen collection and P&W had yet to be invented. I think I’ll take things a bit slower with this collection and supplement it with P&W stuff from other collections, just so I have something to a) make noise with and b) grumble about. I’ll also omit anything made redundant like old mass settings.
Since these songs are from as far back as the seventies, they may have special meanings for people. If so, do let me know how they are special, especially if I note an ignorance of the tune or composer.