3rd Sunday of Easter (Year C, 2010)

Entrance	Crown him with many crowns
Gloria	from Beneath the Tree of Life (Marty Haugen)
Psalm	I will praise you, Lord (Daniel Bath)
Gospel Acclamation	Easter Alleluia (chant)
Preparation of the Gifts	Let all the earth cry out (Psallite)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Spring Sanctus (mcb)
Agnus Dei	Lamb of God II (mcb)
Communion	Come and eat this bread (Marty Haugen)
Postcommunion	O Sons and Daughters (traditional, arr. C.V. Stanford)
Recessional	At the Lamb’s high feast we sing

My flight’s been cancelled because of the volcano has got to be the all-time best excuse from a missing choir member; at any rate, I can’t imagine what’s going to beat it. But the rest of us made it for our first sung Mass since Easter Sunday.

Our Eastertide music as usual aims for a lighter, brighter touch than our more austere Lenten fare. This year Marty Haugen’s Gloria and my own Spring Sanctus are the staples. There seems to be something irrepressibly cheerful, and eminently Paschal, about 6/8 time.

The Entrance and Communion antiphons were both there, our piece from Psallite at the preparation of the gifts setting the Entrance text, and a second look in for Marty Haugen in his reflective Communion song, building on our Lord’s words in the Communion antiphon.

The choir sang Stanford’s arrangement of O Filii et Filiae, with words by the fifteenth century Parisian friar Jean Tisserand, in J.M. Neale’s translation, and the well-known melody – apparently composed to fit this text – whose earliest source seems to be a collection published in 1623. It mainly uses unison voices, the men and women alternating to tell different parts of the resurrection narrative, with drama added by the florid organ part, and unaccompanied choral harmonies lending moments of graceful reflection. It’s a tune which should feature more centrally in our Easter repertoire.