By Flowing Waters: Chant for the Liturgy, a Collection of Unaccompanied Song for Assemblies, Cantors, and Choirs [Hardcover]

Paul F. Ford (Author, Introduction), Frederick R. McManus (Foreword), Alice Parker (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 466 pages
• Publisher: Liturgical Press (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814625959
• ISBN-13: 978-0814625958
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #144,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

CURRICULUM VITAE for Paul F. Ford

BORN April 8, 1947 in Springfield (Hampden County) Massachusetts

PARENTS Bernard William Ford and Theresa Marie Bourcier (both deceased)

SISTERS AND BROTHERS oldest of three sisters (Marguerite, Kathleen, and Christine) and three brothers (Mark, John, and Raymond)

MARITAL STATUS married to Janice Daurio, Ph.D., June 29, 1985; no children

EDUCATION Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, California) 1975-1987, Ph.D. in theology; dissertation: "C. S. Lewis: Ecumenical Spiritual Director: A Study of His Experience and Theology of Prayer and Discernment in the Process of Becoming a Self" (Jack Rogers, Ph.D., mentor)

St. John's Seminary (Camarillo, California) 1969-1973, M.A. in religion; thesis: "The Life of the World to Come in the Writings of C. S. Lewis" (Msgr. James D. O'Reilly, Ph.D., director)

St. John's Seminary College (Camarillo, California) 1967-1969, B.A. in philosophy

Ryan Preparatory College (Fresno, California) 1961-1967

Roman Catholic grammar school (St. Ann's, Ridgecrest, California)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sing to the Lord a new (old) song, July 11, 2000

By 

Paul R. Buckley "paulywoli" (Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: By Flowing Waters: Chant for the Liturgy, a Collection of Unaccompanied Song for Assemblies, Cantors, and Choirs (Hardcover)

It's one of the ironies of modern Christianity that the churches claiming to make the most of the Bible in their theology make the least of the Bible in their worship. Evangelicals, for all their insistence on the authority, infallibility, and God-givenness of the Bible, have the least biblical worship in Christendom. It is unbiblical not in the sense that it breaks this rule or that, but in the sense that the Bible itself plays little or no role in the language and content of worship.

If you visit a "Bible church," for example, you may find that the Bible is a closed book, liturgically speaking. It isn't sung. It isn't prayed. It is a springboard for the sermon, and no more. But if you step into, say, an Anglican or Orthodox church, you find a way of worship much more explicitly biblical. The people hear two or three readings from both the Old and the New Testaments. They sing the Psalms and the Lord's Prayer, and the service includes hymns shot through with scriptural language.

The point of the comparison isn't to vilify one church and idealize another. Every tradition has its liabilities. But it does raise a question: What are evangelicals missing that many other Christians aren't? The answer: The other Christians have not forgotten that the Psalms are the church's first and greatest hymnbook.

The Psalms have always occupied a central place in private devotion, of course. Jerome, the great fourth-century translator and scholar, reports hearing them sung by people in the fields and in their gardens. But the Psalms were also central to public worship. Psalm-singing churches are following a tradition rooted in the Bible itself. Jesus prayed the Psalms. They were twice on his lips when he was dying. He even said, after his resurrection, that the Psalms really speak of his own suffering and glory. What greater incentive does the Christian need to pray and sing them?

"By Flowing Waters" is a collection of biblical songs -- mostly Psalms -- set to some of the most durable and attractive music that the church has produced. The melodies are basically what we're used to calling "Gregorian" or "plainsong" -- unison and unaccompanied. (It's astonishing that churches haven't capitalized on the success of all those popular Gregorian chant CDs. Why don't we get to sing the best examples of plainsong in church? The appetite for such music is clearly there.)

Paul F. Ford's settings are intended for antiphonal or responsorial singing. That is, a cantor or choir chants the Psalm, and the congregation sings a brief response (usually a sentence from the Psalm) after every verse or two. But there's nothing to keep a church from learning to sing the whole Psalm.

Not all of the Psalms are here, and many that are have been truncated. The translations, from the New Revised Standard Version, will not suit every ear. But one great virtue of this humble music is that it can be adapted to any translation. It could be adapted to the phone book, for that matter. So even if you don't like the New Revised Standard Version, you could use Ford's settings as guide for your own arrangements with another translation. His introductory essay explains how the chants are structured and makes helpful suggestions about singing them.

The author and publisher are Catholic, but musicians from other traditions who want to add sung prayer to their churches' worship will find plenty to draw on. Ford invites them to use what they wish. And for anyone who reads music, "By Flowing Waters" wouldn't be bad for private use either.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the true Vatican II Liturgical reform, August 22, 2001

By 

Athanasius the Portly (Central New York) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: By Flowing Waters: Chant for the Liturgy, a Collection of Unaccompanied Song for Assemblies, Cantors, and Choirs (Hardcover)

The General Instructions for the Roman Missal indicates that for Opening, Offertory, and Communion the preference should be 1) The Antiphon from the Roman Gradual 2) The Antiphon from the Simple Gradual 3) Another psalm 4) Some other song consistent with the above.

Until now, unless one was singing Latin, options 1 and 2 were eliminated, and option 3 was ignored, and option 4 all too often took the form of some banal hymn.

"By Flowing Waters" is an english edition of the Simple Gradual (which was prepared under a mandate from the Second Vatican Council), opening the door to the use of sung Scripture in worship.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Chant Collection, January 23, 2007

By 

M. Weidner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: By Flowing Waters: Chant for the Liturgy, a Collection of Unaccompanied Song for Assemblies, Cantors, and Choirs (Hardcover)

This is the best and most comprehensive collection of English chant for Catholic liturgy that I am aware of. The collection contains the entire Graduale Simplex, translated into English and using the same chant melodies of the GS. The text was not forced into fitting the traditional melodies, but the melodies were slightly adapted to fit the text, resulting in a convincing chanting of the English language. Some other chants are included in addition to the Graduale Simplex. This book is amazingly comprehensive, well-organized, and extremely useful.