The Mass of Chrism (2011)

Thursday, 21 April 2011

Opening Hymn	Christ triumphant, ever-reigning
Kyrie	Kyrie Eleison from Missa Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd)
Gloria	from Mass for John Carroll (Michael Joncas)
Responsorial Psalm	I will sing for ever of your love (mcb)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Procession of the Oils	O Redeemer (Paul Ford/mcb)
Preparation of the Gifts	Love Divine (Howard Goodall)
Sanctus, Acclamation A, Amen	Mass XVIII (in English) & Missal tones
Agnus Dei	Mass XVIII (in Latin) & Missa O Quam Gloriosum (T.L. de Victoria 1548-1611)
Communion	O Lord, I will sing of your constant love (Christopher Walker) Sitivit Anima Mea (G.P. da Palestrina, c.1525-1594) Now we remain (David Haas)
Recessional Hymn	My song is love unknown

 

I chose our entrance hymn, to John Barnard’s very fine tune Guiting Power, because of the fourth verse:

Priestly King, enthroned for ever high in heaven above!
Sin and death and hell shall never stifle hymns of love.

which seemed a good match for the entrance antiphon for today’s celebration:

Jesus Christ has made us a kingdom of priests to serve his God and Father: glory and kingship be his for ever and ever. Amen.

It was a gamble, in that the hymn isn’t necessarily one well-known to Catholic congregations. I tested the water during my five-minute rehearsal with the people before Mass, and found that, yes, at least ten people present (out of nearly a thousand) knew it well enough to sing along with me. It’s amazing what you can achieve in five minutes with a willing singing assembly, though, and we still just about managed to shake the rafters during the entrance procession.

The Mass XVIII Sanctus, with words in English, was another cautious experiment: since this is the melody we are encouraged to have at the core of our repertoire when the new Missal translation comes in, I thought I’d try it out on this occasion, in a version as close as possible – barring the words power and might in place of hosts – to the version coming in later in the year. The aim was to plant a seed or two for the future, and also to find out how good a simple chant setting like this might be at uniting a disparate congregation on a grand occasion.

I was disappointed, I have to say. In this celebration in the past we've used settings that were unfamiliar to the congregation before the event – Richard Proulx's Community Mass, or my own Spring Sanctus, for instance – and they've worked well, the melody and the meter seeming to persuade the assembly to sing an unfamiliar setting with commitment. The chant setting in comparison seemed to fall short of that target, leaving me more doubtful than perhaps I was of the merit of a simple chant version as the essential core repertoire for people’s acclamations.

But you never know: the simplest tunes can be given real strength through the familiarity that turns them into old favourites. Perhaps it won’t take long.

Palm Sunday (2011)

 

Entrance	Hosanna Filio David (Plainchant & T.L. de Victoria, c. 1548-1611) All Glory Laud and Honour
Psalm	My God, my God (Liam Lawton)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Preparation of the Gifts	Crucifixus from the Mass in B Minor (J.S. Bach, 1685-1750)
Sanctus	Mass XVII
Acclamation	Missal Tone: Lord, by your cross
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII & Missa Brevis (Antonio Lotti, c. 1667-1740)
Communion	Father, if this cup (Stephen Dean)
Recessional	My song is love unknown

 

There was, I thought, a striking affinity between the Bach Crucifixus and Stephen Dean’s atmospheric Communion song – both begin with chromatic harmonies over pulsing repeated bass notes (both in the key of E minor). I wondered whether the Bach was Stephen’s inspiration for writing the piece. They went together well, I felt.

We had more Bach from Anthony, our Communion processional song being followed by the chorale prelude Erbarm’ dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721, and for a postlude after Mass, the final movement of the St Matthew Passion (Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder).

5th Sunday of Lent (Year A, 2011)

 

Entrance	Out of the depths (Scott Soper)
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Psalm	Ps 129 (Peter Smedley)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Preparation of the Gifts	Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts (Henry Purcell, 1659-1695)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII
Communion	I will put a new spirit within you (Stephen Dean)
Recessional	Praise to the holiest

 

From the depths to the height, in our entrance song (echoing today’s responsorial psalm) and our recessional hymn. At communion we had Stephen Dean’s I will put a new spirit within you, a new one for us. Its text was from Ezekiel 36, and echoed the same image from the following chapter, which appeared in today’s first reading:

You will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, my people. And I shall put my spirit in you, and you will live.

The responsorial psalm itself said:

O let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleading.

Henry Purcell set a similar plea for forgiveness from the burial service from the Book of Common Prayer:

Shut not thy merciful ears unto our prayer,
but spare us Lord most holy.

4th Sunday of Lent (Year A, 2011)

Sunday, 3 April 2011

 

Entrance	Your hands, O Lord, in days of old
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Psalm	His goodness shall follow me (Chris O’Hara)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Preparation of the Gifts	My spirit longs for thee (John Dowland, 1563-1626)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII & Missa O Quam Gloriosum (T.L. de Victoria, 1548-1611)
Communion	Lord, your love has drawn us near (Stephen Dean)
Recessional	Be thou my vision

 

Today’s Gospel story of the healing of the man born blind prompted a few of our musical selections. Our opening hymn, with the lines

And then your touch brought life and health,
gave speech and strength and sight

was sung to the tune Coe Fen, and we had vision in a wider sense in our recessional hymn. The choir sang My spirit longs for thee, fitting the words of John Byrom (1692-1763) to a song by John Dowland. These words touched more obliquely on sight:

Yet has my heart no rest,
Unless it come from Thee.
Unless it come from Thee,
In vain I look around;
In all that I can see,
No rest is to be found.

For our responsorial psalm we took Chris O’Hara’s adaptation of Ps 22(23), hauntingly set to the Irish folk song She moved through the fair. We sang it unaccompanied, the cantor’s verses (beautifully executed by Rachel O’Farrell) alternating with the refrain in four part harmony, though with the people joining in too.

Plainchant and Victoria too; our trademark mix, you could say.

3rd Sunday of Lent (Year A, 2011)

 

Entrance	Your love is finer than life (Marty Haugen)
Sprinkling Rite	Springs of Water (Marty Haugen)
Psalm	O that today (Chris O’Hara)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Preparation of the Gifts	Sitivit anima mea (G.P. da Palestrina, c.1525-1594)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII
Communion	Come to me and drink (Bob Hurd)
Recessional	Guide me, O thou great redeemer

 

Today’s readings and propers contained a host of images of thirst, drinking, springs and water. The Communion antiphon was from John 4:13:

Whoever drinks the water that I shall give him, says the Lord
will have a spring inside him, welling up for eternal life.

Bob Hurd’s Communion processional song sets a similar image from later in St John’s Gospel (7:37-38):

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.
Let anyone who believes in me come and drink. As scripture says, from his heart shall flow streams of living water.

We sang the verse citing this image, and those adapted from verses of Psalm 42:

My soul is thirsting for God,
the living God;
when can I enter and appear
before the face of God?

My tears have become my bread,
by day, by night,
as they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”

These same verses were also the text of Palestrina’s serenely beautiful motet, the second of a pair with the more familiar Sicut Cervus. The challenge in rehearsal was not to let the beauty of the music completely veil the haunting sadness of the words.

2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A, 2011)

Sunday, 20 March 2011

 

Entrance	Remember your mercy, Lord (Paul Inwood)
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Psalm	Ps 32 (Alan Rees)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Preparation of the Gifts	Averte faciem tuam (from Miserere Mei by Antonio Lotti, c. 1667-1740)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII
Communion	Here is my servant, here is my Son (Psallite)
Recessional	Immortal, Invisible

 

Today’s Entrance antiphon came from Psalm 24(25):

Remember your mercies, Lord,
your tenderness from ages past.

We sang Paul Inwood’s very fine setting, with choral verses (setting the Grail translation of the psalm text) and a people’s refrain. The extended refrain and the organ interludes make it a good processional song.

The Communion antiphon,

This is my Son, my beloved,
in whom is all my delight: listen to him.

echoing the Gospel story of the Transfiguration, was a new element in the 1970 Roman Missal, so I shouldn’t have been surprised not to be able to find a polyphonic choral setting. We sang the setting by the Psallite composers, combining a prayerful adaptation of the antiphon text with verses from Isaiah. The latter were an unwieldy object for chanting, but presented the choir with a good test of coordination and clear diction.

Another instalment of Lotti’s Miserere, to follow the section we sang for Ash Wednesday. This time we sang from Averte faciem tuam (turn your face from my sins) to Et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam (and my mouth shall declare your praise). The episodic character of the setting, meandering from verse to verse with nothing in the way of recurring thematic material, gives it a restless, even shapeless feel, but the strength of the pleading in the declamatory final verse of today’s excerpt (beginning Domine, labia mea aperies (Lord, open my lips)) gave the piece its character.

The Rite of Election (2011)

 

Opening Hymn	The Church’s one foundation
Responsorial Psalm	Teach me, O God (Chris Walker)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Enrolment	Take, O take me as I am (John L Bell)
After the Election of the Catechumens	Who calls you by name (David Haas)
Welcome of Candidates	Always in your presence (Philip Jakob)
After Welcome of Candidates	A Clare Benediction (John Rutter)
Prayers of Intercession	Miserere Nobis from Missa Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd)
Recessional Hymn	Praise to the holiest

 

A packed celebration like last year’s, this year for the first time with eight candidates for admission to the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. The music was the usual mix of the contemplative and the uplifting. For me, the musical highlight was probably the whole assembly enthusiastically taking up the refrain of Chris Walker’s Teach me, O God. On an occasion like this, the words have especial significance for so many present:

My heart delights
to follow your ways,
to follow your ways to the end.