2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A, 2011)

 

Entrance	Let all the world in every corner sing
Kyrie	Mass for John Carroll (Michael Joncas)
Gloria	Mass for John Carroll
Psalm	Ps 39 (Paul Inwood)
Gospel Acclamation	Here in our Midst (Peter Jones)
Preparation of the Gifts	Jesus the Word has lived among us
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Assisi Acclamations (Nick Baty)
Agnus Dei	Holy Family Mass (John Schiavone)
Communion	Behold the Lamb of God (Psallite)
Postcommunion	The Lamb (John Tavener)
Recessional	Thou whose almighty Word

 

Our opening hymn, setting the words of George Herbert, was a good fit for today’s entrance antiphon:

May all the earth give you worship and praise, and break into song to your name, O God, Most High.

Some of our other music took up John the Baptist’s words of acclamation – there is the Lamb of God – including the antiphon from Psallite accompanying Psalm 34, and Tavener’s setting of William Blake’s poem.

I’m not sure about the latter as sacred music, beautiful and strange though it is. I can't think of many other sung texts addressed not to the persons of God or the saints, or, at a pinch, our fellow human beings here on earth; here the poet apostrophises a common-or-garden lamb. The nearest I can think of is Crux Fidelis, addressing the cross on which our Lord hung, and the nails which held him there. But there’s quite a different between that and this. Any closer suggestions?

Peter Jones’s Gospel acclamation, an exuberant medieval 6/8 folk-dance chiefly in the Dorian mode, goes under several different names – seemingly a different one in each published source. It’s the Wulstan Alleluia or Here in our midst or Alleluia the Christ. Whatever it’s called, it deserves to be more widely known. We adapted the words of the verse slightly: Here in our midst, the Lamb of God.