Who We Are and What We Offer

CanticaNOVA Publications (CNP) provides quality liturgical music for today's Catholic Church. CNP believes that the texts and rites of Catholic liturgy give ample sources for creative musical expression. Using what the Church has already given us, CNP publishes quality music grounded in, and often directly flowing from, the traditions of the Church. This "NEW traditional music" provides the Catholic musician with the ability to be creative in liturgical music planning without having to turn to poor quality, "alternative" religious music.

CNP's contributing composers

Who writes our music? Check out our family of contributing composers!

30 Years of CanticaNOVA Publications!

In early 1996, friends and Catholic musicians Gary Penkala and Chris Bord started to talk about creating a traditionally-focused liturgical music publishing company. At that time there were very few such companies, and most of the big name companies were traveling a road leading decisively away from tradition. Gary had the idea of putting together a group of chant settings of the Gospels for major feasts of the liturgical year, inspired by his years as music director at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. After investing in computers, printers, and music engraving software, work began on what was to become CNP's first product - the Book of Sung Gospels (BSG). On October 1st, 1996, CanticaNOVA Publications became a legal entity and our work here commenced.

A lot has happened since then. In the early years, all our marketing was done with paper through the Postal service, with our first brochure for the BSG being sent out very early in 1997, and our first catalog of 15 products (all written by Gary and Chris) was sent out in the Fall of 1997. In 1999, to take advantage of the World Wide Web, which was starting to come into its own and was available to an increasing number of people, the www.canticanova.com domain was registered, and Chris began writing the CNP website with content provided by Gary. This site allowed us to do more than just sell products, but also to educate through relevant articles, assist liturgical musicians with planning pages for Sundays and Feasts, as well as to receive and answer questions about liturgical music. The planning pages were particularly well-received, and to this day we are not aware of any other planning pages online that are both free and provide music suggestions to various companies, not just CNP. With the web becoming increasingly ubiquitous and postal rates skyrocketing, we chose to halt production of paper catalogs, with the Fall of 2009 being the last one produced. In 2019 we added planning pages for use with the Extraordinary Form of the Mass to assist those involved with this important work.

And we've grown! From 1 product to well over 500 and from 2 composers to 132 (as of Summer 2026) from all over the world, it has been our privilege to present to the Church and her musicians some truly excellent music for use in liturgies. Many thanks to all our superb composers who have trusted us with their works over the years!!

A lot has changed, but our mission remains the same - provide great music, educate liturgical musicians, and make liturgical planning easier with frequently updated planning pages.

Of course, we could never have done any of this without your unwavering support over the past 30 years. Thank you for allowing us to assist you in doing some of the most important work in the Church - assisting Catholics throughout the world in worshipping the Holy Trinity through the beauty of music!