15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2009)

Entrance	Before the heaven and earth
Kyrie	Kyrie Eleison (Dinah Reindorf)
Gloria	Missa Latina (Daniel Bath)
Psalm	Let us see, O Lord, your mercy (Alan Smith)
Gospel Acclamation	Alleluia Mode 2 (Plainchant)
Preparation of the Gifts	God has chosen me (Bernadette Farrell)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass of Christ the King (mcb)
Agnus Dei	from Communion Rite: Take and Eat (Michael Joncas/Gary Daigle)
Communion	I am the true and living bread (Martin Barry/Diane Murden)
Postcommunion	O Salutaris Hostia (No. 3 in F) (Elgar)
Recessional	Forth in thy name

A difficult week to plan for, I found, perhaps because I couldn't find a lot in our repertoire to match the texts of Sunday’s readings and propers. We settled on two items reflecting the sending out of the twelve in the day’s Gospel reading. One was our recessional hymn, Forth in thy name, the other Bernadette Farrell’s God has chosen me, minus the bongo solo, alas (we did it one year, when one of our choral scholars was a percussionist), but with the three-part a cappella close harmony for the women’s voices in the verses. Everyone sang the refrains.

Alan Smith’s psalm setting was from Psalm Songs, and for the Gospel Acclamation we had the mode 2 chant setting that comes up many times in the year (including the feast of Ss Peter and Paul), and features in Decani Music’s Cantate.

Elgar’s O Salutaris Hostia – his third setting of the same text – dates from his early years, when he was still involved with Catholic liturgical music. He probably wrote it when he was twenty-three, but there are plenty of touches that hint at the future composer of the Enigma Variations or Gerontius, at least for a choir willing to ham it up. Like we did.