25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 23 September 2012

 

Entrance	Be thou my vision
Kyrie	(Dinah Reindorf)
Gloria	Psallite
Psalm	Ps 53 (Laurence Bévenot)
Gospel Acclamation	St Agatha Alleluia (mcb)
Preparation of the Gifts	Make me a channel of your peace
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei	from No Greater Love (Michael Joncas)
Communion	In the Lord (Taizé) (alternative words by Paul Inwood)
Postcommunion	Cantique de Jean Racine (Gabriel Fauré, 1845–1924)
Recessional	O God our help in ages past

 

Today’s second reading, from St James, speaks of peace:

Peacemakers, when they work for peace, sow the seeds which will bear fruit in holiness.

We sang Sebastian Temple’s much loved setting of the text often known as the Prayer of St Francis, but which actually seems to have been first published in 1912 in France. As a child in school I remember singing it with the section beginning O master, grant that I may never seek… used as a refrain separating the verses. In recent hymn books that section is usually labelled verse 3, with the first two verses sung in succession before it. I like it better with the recurring refrain, and I’m pleased that the version we sang today – William Llewellyn’s arrangement from the RSCM collection Sing with all my soul takes the same view.

We haven’t sung the Angus Dei from Michael Joncas’s collection No Greater Love for two or three years. Its verses, drawn from 1 Corinthians 10, John 6 and the Didache, are (I imagine) out of line with the prescriptions regarding sticking to the text, which accompanied the introduction of the new translation of the Missal last year. So we confined ourselves to three repetitions of the strong and memorable refrain, with just a bar in between on the organ to catch one’s breath. I thought it worked well.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 16 September 2012

 

Entrance	Praise to the holiest
Kyrie	Kyrie Litany for Lent from Missa Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd) [UC 46]
Gloria	Missa Ubi Caritas
Psalm	Ps 114 (Stephen Dean)
Gospel Acclamation	St Agatha Alleluia (mcb)
Preparation of the Gifts	The servant King (Graham Kendrick)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Missa Ubi Caritas
Agnus Dei	Missa Ubi Caritas
Communion	Our blessing cup (Michael Joncas) & verses from Ps 115(116) (Stephen Dean)
Postcommunion	Lord Jesu Christ, my life and light, BWV 118 (J.S. Bach)
Recessional	My song is love unknown

 

Michael Joncas’s setting of the Communion antiphon text has a tuneful refrain, but the wide tessitura of the verses makes them rather more soloistic than to my mind would be ideal for a Communion song. I expect that means that this particular setting is better suited to use as the responsorial psalm for Holy Thursday; in any event, we got round the problem by singing chant verses from Ps 115(116) to a tone by Stephen Dean. This also meant that the song could be prolonged to cover more of the Communion procession than Joncas’s two verses, so in all it felt like a successful adaptation of the original.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 9 September 2012

 

Entrance	Your hands, O Lord
Kyrie	Kyrie Litany for Lent from Missa Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd)
Gloria	Missa Ubi Caritas
Psalm	Ps 145 (Stephen Dean)
Gospel Acclamation	St Agatha Alleluia (mcb)
Preparation of the Gifts	Do not be afraid
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Missa Ubi Caritas
Agnus Dei	Missa Ubi Caritas
Communion	As the deer longs (Bob Hurd)
Postcommunion	All things bright and beautiful (John Rutter)
Recessional	Thou whose almighty Word

 

Tday’s Gospel reading told of the healing of a man unable to hear, or to speak clearly, and our opening and closing hymns took up the healing theme. The first reading, from Isaiah, also talked of healing, with the words Do not be afraid, and at the Preparation of the Gifts Gerald Markland’s hymn set the same words from elsewhere in Isaiah.

At the end of the Gospel story, our Lord’s act of healing is acclaimed with the words He has done all things well, a phrase echoed in Cecil Alexander’s hymn All things bright and beautiful:

He gave us eyes to see them
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty
Who has made all things well

which we sang in John Rutter’s charming choral setting.

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

Sunday, 2 September 2012

 

Entrance	Praise my soul, the King of heaven
Kyrie	Kyrie I (Taizé)
Gloria	Glory to God (Peter Jones)
Psalm	The just will live (Stephen Dean)
Gospel Acclamation	Easter Alleluia (chant)
Preparation of the Gifts	O Lord, you are good (mcb)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei	Take and Eat (Michael Joncas/Gary Daigle)
Communion	Come to me (Martin Barry/Diane Murden)
Postcommunion	Lead me, Lord (Samuel Sebastian Wesley, 1810-1876)
Recessional	Tell out, my soul

 

A small but perfectly-formed subset of the choir reassembled for our first outing since the summer break. As usual for the first Sunday in September, we were joined by a large contingent from Province 1 of the Catenian Association, who sang with as much verve as ever. This was the first Sunday for a few years when their visit coincided not with the 23rd Sunday but the 22nd. (I wonder if they imagined until this week that the only motet we knew was Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus?)

Our song at the Preparation of the Gifts was a setting of the same psalm as the Entrance Antiphon text from Ps 85(86):

O Lord, you are good and forgiving
Full of mercy to all who call to you

while our opening hymn had similar themes taken from Ps 102(103).

The readings spoke of following the Lord’s commandments, as did Samuel Wesley’s simple choral anthem, setting the psalm verses Ps 4:8 and Ps 5:8.

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 5 August 2012

 

Entrance	All people that on earth do dwell
Gloria	Missa de Angelis
Gospel Acclamation	Easter Alleluia (chant)
Preparation of the Gifts	Lord Jesus Christ, you have come to us
Sanctus, Acclamation	Gathering Mass (Paul Inwood)
Communion	One bread, one body (John Foley)
Recessional	Forth in the peace of Christ

 

The choir’s on holiday until September, so this was typical summer holiday fare, for assembly and reluctant organist. The music – chosen by the management – was a good and ambitious mix, which elicited confident singing for the opening and closing hymns, and for the Gospel Acclamation and Sanctus. Not many people seemed to know their way through the Gloria from Mass VIII, and while the revised Gathering Mass uses the same melodic material as before, we haven’t thus far sung any of the new Memorial Acclamations. By about half-way through, people seemed to realise that the unfamiliar words fitted a familiar tune.

One bread, one body needs piano accompaniment, to provide some rhythmic movement underneath the rather static melody, and as both the extension cable (the piano’s actually a Clavinova) and the piano stool seemed to have gone walkabout, we were stuck with the organ, and no-one really knew what was happening. But we made it to the end.

All that, plus the Allemande from the Suite in A Major by Telemann by way of a voluntary. Anthony could find himself out of a job.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, 2012)

Sunday, 22 July 2012

Entrance	Praise we our God with joy
Kyrie	Kyrie for 3 voices adapted from Byrd (mcb)
Gloria	Glory to God (Peter Jones)
Psalm	His goodness shall follow me (Chris O’Hara)
Gospel Acclamation	Here in our Midst (Peter Jones)
Preparation of the Gifts	The living God my shepherd is
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass of Creation (Marty Haugen)
Agnus Dei	Holy Family Mass (John Schiavone)
Communion	Here I stand at the door (John Bell)
Postcommunion	Flocks in pastures green (J.S. Bach, 1685-1750)
Recessional	Hail Redeemer, King divine

 

The lectionary makes ample reference today to the image of the Shepherd, and the three hymns, the Responsorial Psalm and our Postcommunion piece all did the same. The psalm setting was Chris O’Hara’s, with the verses set (a cappella, the way we did it) to the Irish folk melody She moved through the fair. Bekki Gocher was the cantor, in a haunting rendition.

We combined John Bell’s paraphrase of today’s Communion antiphon with chanted verses from Psalm 15(16): O Lord, it is you who are my portion and cup.

That’s it from the choir until September. Next Sunday (5 August), the people of God of Salford do their annual penance: Anthony’s in Lourdes and so I’m playing the organ. I’m hoping for yet more of those glowing tributes, but I’ll settle for politely averted gazes afterwards.

Ordination to the Priesthood of Joseph Gee

Saturday of Week 15 in Ordinary Time
21 July 2012

 

Entrance	Praise to the Holiest
Kyrie	Kyrie Eleison from Missa Ubi Caritas (Bob Hurd)
Gloria	Psallite Mass
Psalm	The Cry of the Poor (John Foley)
Gospel Acclamation	Easter Alleluia
Litany of the Saints	Chant
Illustrative Rites	Veni Creator Spiritus (chant, with vv 2 & 6 by T.L. de Victoria, 1548-1611)
Kiss of Peace	Sicut Cervus (G.P. da Palestrina, 1525-1594)
Preparation of the Gifts	God has chosen me (Bernadette Farrell)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Spring Sanctus (mcb)
Agnus Dei	Missa Ubi Caritas
Communion	Come to me (Martin Barry & Diane Murden)
Postcommunion	O Salutaris Hostia in F (Edward Elgar, 1857-1934)
Recessional	Tell out, my soul

 

A good mix of music for a happy celebration. The most appreciative comments afterwards were for Bernadette Farrell’s God has chosen me, which captures the essence of priestly vocation (as expressed in Luke 4:18) in vibrant musical form.