This website, mci.archpitt.org, was created help the cantors, clergy, and laypeople of the Byzantine Catholic Church in singing our liturgical prayers with understanding and beauty.
Finding your way around
The pull-down menu at the top of each page takes you to the major areas of this webite:
- Home – a link back to the main page, and articles about using the webite
- Blog – the MCI web log, with news items and discussion
- Calendar – a liturgical calendar for the current year, with links to sheet music
- Topics – articles on liturgy, chant, singing, and spirituality, organized by subject
- Courses – the actual courses in the MCI program, along with information about cantor training and certification
- Publications – a guide to printed service books, both official and unofficial
- Resources – audio, video, and web resources for learning
The main page and blog also have a sidebar with information about upcoming events and recent blog posts, and well as a search feature for the entire website.
Using the sheet music on this website
Unless otherwise noted, all printed music on this website may be downloaded for private use or (with the permission of your priest or bishop) for use in church. As noted at the bottom of each page of the website:
The texts, music and commentary on this website were prepared by the Metropolitan Cantor Institute of the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh. They are approved for provisional use in the Archeparchy, but are otherwise unofficial and should be considered superseded by any materials promulgated by the Council of Hierarchs.
Music in PDF format
On the Liturgical Calendar and Publications pages, you will find links to printable sheet music for various services. In general, these are in Adobe PDF format, identified by the letters “PDF” or a PDF icon, accompanied by a file size if the file is large. The Adobe PDF format allows high-quality viewing and printing of sheet music.
To view or print this music, you can use the free Adobe Reader software. (Download Adobe Reader.)
Once this software is installed, most web browsers will use it automatically to display PDF files.
You can also download PDF files to your computer, for later viewing or printing, or to take to a copy shop for printing. In many browsers, you “right click” a PDF file link to save the file instead of viewing it immediately.
Printing music in PDF format
Most printed music on this website uses a common page size of 8.5 inches (height) by 7 inches (width). This allows music to be printed “2-up” (that is, two pages on each size of a sheet) on ordinary legal size, 11 by 14 inch paper. To print this music, you can do any of the following:
- From Adobe Reader, print the music being displayed using the “scale to fit” option, which will shrink or expand the music page to fit the paper size in your printer.
- From Adobe Reader, print the music being displayed on legal size paper, with the “booklet printing” option.
- Download the PDF file and send or take it to a copy shop or print shop.
To facilitate printing larger services or music books, we have prepared a number of the PDF files in an alternate format, already set up for two-sided booklet printing on 11 by 14 inch paper. When viewing a PDF file in a web browser, just add “_booklet” to the Web address, just before the “.pdf” at the end of the address. For example, if you are viewing the Akathist to the Mother of God:
http://mci.archpitt.org/sheetmusic/general/Akathist.pdf
you can change the address in the browser to
http://mci.archpitt.org/sheetmusic/general/Akathist_booklet.pdf
to view or download the “camera-ready” version of the same service.
Music in other formats
Most music displayed in individual articles is NOT in PDF format, but consists of graphics files (usually in .gif format) which will be automatically displayed by your web browser. In general, this format is not recommended for printing, since it will not “scale” to match your printer’s page size and resolution. If you plan to print more that a small amount of music, we suggest you do this from music in PDF format.
Using the recordings on this website
This website also provides quite a few recordings of chant, in both English and Slavonic, all in MP3 format. All this music may be freely downloaded for personal study; it may not be redistributed without permission.
In most web browsers, you can click on any of the links on the Recordings page, or the Listen links on the instructional pages, to hear specific recordings. You may need to adjust settings for the audio player on your computer (such as Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime) to suit your own needs.
We are looking for ways to add “on-screen” control for audio records, and may also be adding MIDI (computer generated audio) to meet certain specific instructional needs. But in general, we feel that hearing actual recordings of live singing is the best way to learn to begin learning plainchant.