13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

Today the Year 3 children of the parish primary school celebrated First Holy Communion. Music was provided by the children of the school, and the cathedral choir had the day off. We’re back next Sunday.

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

Entrance	Praise to the holiest
Kyrie	Kyrie for 3 voices, adapted from William Byrd (mcb)
Gloria	Coventry Gloria (Peter Jones)
Psalm	Ps 62: For you my soul is thirsting (author unknown)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of the Gifts	Your love is finer than life (Marty Haugen)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	German Mass (Franz Schubert, arr. Richard Proulx)
Agnus Dei	Hurd Mass (Bob Hurd)
Communion	The eyes of everyone (mcb)
Postcommunion	Oculi Omnium (Charles Wood, 1866-1926)
Recessional	At the Lamb’s high feast

We heard the words of Psam 62(63) twice, once in Marty Haugen’s fine setting with three-part close harmony for the women’s voices in the verses, and once in today’s responsorial psalm.

We sang the latter to an Anglican psalm tone - a rare venture for us into a sound-world quite different from our more usual style, namely tones by, or in the style of, Laurence Bévenot. Bévenot’s psalm tones are inspired by the Gregorian modes, though with a simpler termination (cadence) at the end of each line than in the Gregorian tones themselves. Anglican chant, by comparison, is both more elaborate and more formulaic at the ends of the lines, and the task in rehearsal was to make light of the cadences, so as not to find ourselves repeatedly subordinating the natural speech rhythms to those of the music.

I’m not sure who wrote the tone we used. We were singing from a manuscript copy found gathering dust in the choir’s music library. Choir members who move in the right circles said it was a well-known Anglican tone, but between us we weren’t able to pinpoint it.

The setting of the Kyrie was an adaptation by me of the Kyrie from the Byrd Mass for Three Voices, expanded (chiefly by repetition) to accommodate the third form of the Penitential Rite. Click here to download a copy, which you’re most welcome to print out and make use of.

The first reading today from Zechariah, and the Gospel reading, both talked of our Lord’s suffering. The stark prophecy: they will look on the one whom they have pierced prompted the choice of our final hymn of thanksgiving –

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing
Praise to our victorious King,
Who hath washed us in the tide
Flowing from his pierced side.

[update 26/6/10: fixed the link to the Kyrie.]

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, 2010)

Entrance	Remember your mercy, Lord (Paul Inwood)
Kyrie	Lord, show us your mercy (mcb)
Gloria	Missa Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd)
Psalm	Ps 31 (Stephen Dean/Harry Bramma)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of the Gifts	Lord, hear my voice (mcb)
Sanctus, Acclamation A, Amen	German Mass (Franz Schubert, arr. Richard Proulx)
Agnus Dei	Hurd Mass (Bob Hurd)
Communion	There is one thing I ask (Chris O’Hara)
Postcommunion	Adoremus in aeternum (adapted from Gregorio Allegri, 1582-1652)
Recessional	Rejoice, the Lord is King

We were compared favourably with the Sistine Chapel choir this morning by Fr Tony, freshly returned from a trip to Rome to celebrate the end of the Year for Priests. His approbation was for our singing of the chant verses in Adoremus in Aeternum, adapted from Allegri. The spirit of the chant, it seems to me, is in aestu temperies: coolness. There’s no room for ‘personality’ in the singing of it; rather, the voices of the singers, like the notes of the melody themselves, are a vehicle for the text, and the musical pace and dynamic contour are those of the rise and fall of breathing.

I’ve looked hard for a source for the Allegri. We were singing from photocopies of a crumbling original long out of copyright, marked with the phrase from Gregorio Allegri but not revealing who the adaptation was done by, nor from what original source. At a guess, I’d imagine it was Richard Terry. Can anyone shed any more light?

Our music today led us through an unfolding reflection on God’s mercy. We began with pleas for forgiveness in our opening song, Paul Inwood’s setting of Psalm 24(25), and in the Responsorial Psalm (31(32)); our song at the Preparation of the Gifts (which was actually a setting of the Entrance antiphon) combined the same plea with the yearning for God’s presence articulated in Psalm 26(27). The latter psalm also furnished the text for the Communion antiphon, sung to Chris O’Hara’s gentle tuneful setting. Then in the Allegri we sang quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia eius (for his mercy is confirmed over us), and our final hymn took up the injunction we’d sung earlier in Psalm 31(32) to rejoice in the Lord.

The Body and Blood of Christ (Year C, 2010)

Entrance	Sweet Sacrament divine
Kyrie	Taizé Kyrie I
Gloria	Coventry Gloria (Peter Jones)
Psalm	Ps 109 (Geoffrey Boulton Smith)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of the Gifts	Ave Verum Corpus (Charles Gounod, 1818-1893)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	German Mass (Franz Schubert, arr Richard Proulx)
Agnus Dei	Hurd Mass (Bob Hurd)
Communion	Take and Eat (Michael Joncas)
Postcommunion	O Sacrum Convivium (mcb)
Recessional	O Jesus Christ, remember

Lo, round thy lowly shrine with suppliant hearts we come seemed fitting words for our gathering hymn; more so, perhaps, than to sing a much-loved hymn of Eucharistic adoration such as this one during Communion. At Communion we echoed the words of today’s second reading: this is my body, in Michael Joncas’s Take and eat. Our Lord’s command entails something deeper than adoration: an encounter with Christ from which it is impossible to emerge unchanged.

I wrote my setting of O Sacrum Convivium the week I joined the cathedral choir, in November 1990. It’s my attempt to sound French, I think: not Messiaen, but maybe somewhere around Ravel. Have a listen here if you have the Scorch plugin installed on your computer.

Michael Milnes RIP

We learned today of the unexpected sad death of Mike Milnes, organist here at Salford Cathedral from 1986 to 2000. May he rest in peace.

 

Trinity Sunday (Year C, 2010)

Entrance	Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty
Kyrie	Taizé Kyrie I
Gloria	Coventry Gloria (Peter Jones)
Psalm	Ps 8 (Sebastian Wolff)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Creed	Credo III
Preparation of the Gifts	A Hymn to the Trinity (P. I. Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893)
Sanctus, Acclamation A, Amen	German Mass (Franz Schubert, arr. Richard Proulx)
Agnus Dei	Hurd Mass (Bob Hurd)
Communion	God beyond all names (John Bell) & Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas (chant)
Postcommunion	Tibi Laus (Orlande de Lassus, c. 1532-1594)
Recessional	Holy God, we praise thy name

Trinity Sunday marks a return to the misleadingly-named Ordinary Time in the Sunday liturgical cycle (though of course strictly it resumed last Monday), and our musical fare changed accordingly. Bob Hurd’s Lamb of God goes nicely with Richard Proulx’s adaptation of Schubert’s Deutsche Messe, and Jacques Berthier’s Kyrie might have been written to precede Peter Jones’s now-venerable setting of the Gloria.

Tchaikovsky wrote four settings of the Cherubic Hymn from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. A short hymn of five lines plus the Alleluias, it comes in the Orthodox liturgy at a point corresponding to the Preparation of the Gifts in the Roman Mass. Russian settings usually have a slow and elaborate treatment of the first four lines, and then a separate, more animated last line, with the alleluias following. We sang the English version by W.G. Rothery published in 1906, which amplifies the text to fill the verses (of Tchaikovsky’s setting No. 1 in F) with less repetition and melisma than in the Slavonic original. Rothery’s inspiration seems to have been the Te Deum, with the image of the saints and martyrs joining with the angels to sing Holy, holy, holy. Our final hymn, too, was a Te Deum, and the opening hymn painted the same picture of the angels and saints singing the Trinity’s praises.

Pentecost, 2010

Entrance	O Spirit All-embracing
Gloria	from Beneath the Tree of Life (Marty Haugen)
Psalm	Ps 103 (David Saint)
Gospel Acclamation	Pentecost Sequence (arr. Richard Proulx); Easter Alleluia
Rite of Confirmation	Breathe on me, breath of God (Evelyn Brokish) Spirit of God (Bernadette Farrell) Veni Sancte Spiritus (Taizé)
Preparation of the Gifts	Hymn to the Holy Spirit (Randolph Currie)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Spring Sanctus (mcb)
Agnus Dei	from Beneath the Tree of Life (Marty Haugen)
Communion	Spirit of the living God & Psalm 103 (John Ainslie)
Recessional	Come Holy Ghost

Evelyn Brokish OSF, the internet reveals, is a Franciscan nun living and working in Highland, Indiana in the USA: a golden jubilarian this year, she combines her musical ministry with that of sweet shop proprietor and purveyor of her creation, the ChocoNutty Trio. Her Breathe on me, breath of God clothes an adaptation of the familiar hymn text in a prayerful chant-like setting with a recurring refrain. It worked well as a gentle accompaniment to the procession of the candidates in today’s rite of Confirmation.

We followed it with Bernadette Farrell’s Spirit of God, having begun our celebration with the powerful and beautiful O Spirit, all embracing, with words by Delores Dufner OSB, to the music of Gustav Holst’s Thaxted. The final verse runs

Come, passion’s power holy, your insight here impart,
And give your servants lowly an understanding heart
To know your care more clearly when faith and love are tried,
To seek you more sincerely when false ideals have died:
For vision we implore you, for wisdom’s pure delight;
In prayer we come before you to wait upon your light.

Are all the best songs to the Holy Spirit written by women, I wonder?

We had the traditional chant melodies for the two great Pentecost hymns. Randolph Currie’s choral anthem sets the chant melody Veni Creator Spiritus with Latin and English words, and then, surprisingly and skilfully, puts the two together in canon. We sang the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus in its dancing 6/8 guise, in Richard Proulx’s effervescent arrangement. Both the texts came up a second time too, the latter accompanying Jacques Berthier’s meditative ostinato refrain, and the former in Thomas Tallis’s hymn setting, with which our celebration ended on a properly joyful note.