30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A, 2011)

Sunday, 23 October 2011

 

Entrance	Father, Lord of all creation
Kyrie	Belmont Mass (Christopher Walker)
Gloria	Mass of the Most Sacred Heart (Jacob Bancks)
Psalm	Ps 17 (James Walsh)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Preparation of the Gifts	Make me a channel of your peace (Sebastian Temple, arr. William Llewellyn)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Belmont Mass
Agnus Dei	Belmont Mass
Communion	Lord, your love has drawn us near (Stephen Dean)
Postcommunion	Love divine, all loves excelling (Howard Goodall)
Recessional	All my hope on God is founded

 

Prompted by today’s readings, our musical selections reflected on love, human and divine.

For the ordinary of the Mass, we continued with Chris Walker’s Belmont Mass, whose prayerful chant-inspired melodies to my mind succeed in embodying the ‘noble simplicity’ spoken of (in Sacrosanctum Concilium) as characteristic of the liturgy. The published version is entirely for unison voices, but we experimented today with a cappella four-part harmony, the choir fitting the words to the harmonies of the organ part in both the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei. It worked very well, I thought, and it will give us the option of varying the texture – unison voices with organ, unaccompanied unison singing, accompanied and unaccompanied vocal harmonies – to suit times and seasons.