4th Sunday of Lent (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 18 March 2012

 

Entrance	Rejoice, Rejoice (Psallite)
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Psalm	Ps 136 (Julia Rowntree)
Gospel Acclamation	Glory and Praise (mcb)
Prayers of Intercession	Lord, in your mercy (John Bell)
Preparation of the Gifts	God so loved the world (John Stainer, 1840-1901)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII & Missa O Quam Gloriosum (T.L. de Victoria, 1548-1611)
Communion	O Jerusalem (David Haas)
Postcommunion	(silence)
Recessional	Praise we our God with joy

 

The Entrance antiphon -

Rejoice, Jerusalem! Be glad for her, you who love her;
rejoice with her, you who mourned for her,
and you will find contentment at her consoling breasts.

- gives today its traditional title of Laetare Sunday. The Psallite setting of the antiphon takes the opening motif of Rejoice Greatly from the Messiah, and couples it with chanted verses from Ps 121(122), from which today’s Communion antiphon is also drawn.

David Haas’s lament, from Luke 13:34, kept our focus on Jerusalem. And Stainer’s dramatic, yet at times mesmerisingly peaceful anthem was the natural choice to echo today’s Gospel reading.

3rd Sunday of Lent (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 11 March 2012

 

Entrance	O God, thy people gather
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Gloria	(none)
Psalm	Ps 18 (Geoffrey Boulton Smith)
Gospel Acclamation	Glory and Praise (mcb)
Prayers of Intercession	Lord, in your mercy (John Bell)
Preparation of the Gifts	Adoramus Te Christe (Antonio Lotti, 1667-1740)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII & Missa super Laudate Dominum (Orlande de Lassus, 1532-1594)
Communion	Give us, Lord, a new heart (Bernadette Farrell)
Postcommunion	(silence)
Recessional	Christ triumphant, ever reigning

 

Today’s second reading, from 1 Corinthians, speaks of the madness and foolishness of preaching a crucified Christ instead of miracles and wisdom. Christ driving out the money changers from the Temple perhaps also acts with apparent folly and madness, and obliquely foretells the crucifixion, in the words Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up. Lotti’s antiphon sings of the cross bringing about the redemption of the world, and our final hymn also touched on the same image:

Suffering Servant, scorned, ill-treated,
Victim crucified!
Death is through the cross defeated,
Sinners justified.

The entrance antiphon included the words

I will pour clean water upon you
and cleanse you from all your impurities,
and I will give you a new spirit, says the Lord.

We had Bernadette Farrell’s setting of the same text from Ezekiel. Its verses, shifting restlessly through flat and sharp keys, are a challenge, but our cantor Aimée Presswood carried them off with utmost competence and conviction.

2nd Sunday of Lent (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 4 March 2012

 

Entrance	Kyrie Eleison (Marty Haugen)
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Gloria	(none)
Psalm	Ps 115 (McCarthy/Bévenot)
Gospel Acclamation	Glory and Praise (mcb)
Prayers of Intercession	Lord, in your mercy (John Bell)
Preparation of the Gifts	Hear my prayer, O Lord (Henry Purcell, 1659-1695)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII & Missa Brevis (Antonio Lotti, c. 1667–1740)
Communion	Be still, for the presence of the Lord (David Evans)
Postcommunion	(silence)
Recessional	Be thou my vision

 

The entrance antiphon, from Ps 24(25) included the words

Remember your compassion, O Lord,
and your merciful love

Marty Haugen’s Kyrie Eleison is an extended plea for the same mercy, with thoughtful words for the cantor sung over the ostinato Kyrie refrain:

In my song and in my silence
In my faith and in my doubting
In my courage and my weakness
I call upon you, God.

For the Gospel of the Transfiguration, we had Be still, for the presence. We don’t very often have a hymn at Communion; it’s a much better time to ask the people to sing a short refrain from memory rather than to carry a hymn book or service sheet with them in procession and to read while processing. But this one is short enough that it served more like a prelude to Communion rather than an accompaniment to it, and most people had put down their sheets before it was time for them to process.

Henry Purcell’s powerful and atmospheric anthem for eight voices is thought to be the opening fragment of an incomplete longer work. I wonder what we missed out on, and indeed what further masterpieces we might have been given if Purcell had lived beyond the age of thirty-six?

Rite of Election (2012)

Sunday, 26 February 2012

 

Opening Hymn	The Church’s one foundation
Responsorial Psalm	God of hosts, bring us back (Sue Furlong)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Enrolment	How lovely is your dwelling place (Paul Wellicome)
After the Election of the Catechumens	Who calls you by name (David Haas)
Welcome of Candidates	In the Lord is my true salvation (Inwood/Berthier)
After Welcome of Candidates	All things bright and beautiful (John Rutter)
Prayers of Intercession	Lord in your mercy (John Bell)
Recessional Hymn	Thanks be to God (Stephen Dean)

 

It was a special treat for the choir today to have one of our number among the candidates for reception into the Church at Easter. For the two long processions, respectively of catechumens and candidates, we had Paul Wellicome’s gentle setting of Ps 83(84) and Paul Inwood’s reworked (and I think improved) text for the Taizé refrain In the Lord.

Five minutes’ rehearsal with the assembly before the celebration began meant that Stephen Dean’s hymn of thanksgiving – not nearly as well-known as it ought to be – was sung heartily at its end.

1st Sunday of Lent (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 26 February 2012

 

Entrance	Led by the Spirit (Bob Hurd)
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Psalm	Ps 24 (Boulton Smith/Dean)
Gospel Acclamation	Glory and Praise (mcb)
Preparation of the Gifts	Emendemus in Melius (William Byrd, c.1540-1623)
Sanctus, Acclamation C, Amen	Mass XVII & English Missal tones
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII
Communion	On eagles’ wings (Michael Joncas)
Postcommunion	(silence)
Recessional	Guide me, O thou great redeemer

 

Emendemus in melius is strictly a Responsory for Ash Wednesday, but the text:

Let us correct our faults which we have committed in ignorance, let us not be taken unawares by the day of our death, looking in vain for leisure to repent.
Hear us, O Lord, and show us your mercy, for we have sinned against you.
Help us, O God our Saviour; for the sake of your name, O Lord, set us free.

conforms nicely with our Lord’s call to repentance in today’s Gospel.

Today’s Communion antiphon:

The Lord will conceal you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will trust.

was from Ps 90(91), so we sang Michael Joncas’s much-loved setting of the same psalm, in my arrangement for four voices.

Ash Wednesday (2012)

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Entrance	Lord Jesus, think on me
Psalm	Ps 50 (Stephen Dean)
Gospel Acclamation	Lenten Gospel Acclamation (mcb)
Imposition of Ashes	Lord, Cleanse my heart (Psallite)
Sanctus, Acclamation C, Amen	Mass XVII & Missal tones
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII
Communion	Miserere Mei (Orlande de Lassus, 1532-1594)
Recessional	Our Father, we have wandered

 

Small changes, as usual, to our musical bill of fare; both the Psallite setting of Ps 50(51) and the one by Stephen Dean, for instance, are strong and simple settings that easily bear annual repetition. Our third setting of the opening verse of this psalm was by Lassus.

My setting of the Gospel Acclamation offers a hybrid refrain adapted from three of the suggested texts:

Glory and praise to you, Lord Jesus,
You are the Word of God.

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

 

Entrance	Sing of the Lord’s goodness (Ernest Sands)
Kyrie	Belmont Mass (Christopher Walker)
Gloria	(Peter Jones)
Psalm	Ps 40 (Paul Inwood)
Gospel Acclamation	Here in our Midst (Peter Jones)
Preparation of the Gifts	Stand and stare not (Huub Oosterhuis/Tony Barr)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Spring Sanctus (mcb)
Agnus Dei	Belmont Mass
Communion	There is a longing (Anne Quigley)
Postcommunion	Cum appropinquaret Iesus (Juan Ginés Pérez, c. 1548-1600)
Recessional	Praise my soul, the King of heaven

 

Our postcommunion piece tells a similar story to that in today’s Gospel from Mark (2:1-12). Ginés Pérez sets excerpts from the story of the healing of the blind man from Luke 18:35-42:

As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. He shouted, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’

In today’s story of the paralytic lowered through the roof, Jesus forgives and heals seeing their faith. In both stories, faith leads to audacity, and the healing that follows is perhaps not so much a reward for audacity, but a symbol of what faith itself inexorably brings about.

Our opening hymn reflected the lines from the entrance antiphon:

I will sing to the Lord
who has been bountiful to me.

I almost wrote echoed the lines from the entrance antiphon, but that was truer of the old translation: I will sing of the Lord for his goodness to me. Somehow God’s goodness seems easier to recognise and acknowledge than his being bountiful, but maybe that’s just me.

Our song at the preparation of the gifts, a charming canon with a bit of tricky syncopation thrown in, took its text from the opening lines of the first reading from Isaiah.