This is the first song and the title track of Patricia Smith’s collection of songs for Advent and Christmas and beyond to Epiphany. This book collects songs that are very useful for end of year celebrations at schools, Carols by Candlelight and for liturgies at this time of year. It is a resource that would be useful for any school looking for material for end of year concerts.
This is a lovely song about the angels singing to the shepherds and is essentially a Christmas Carol from Patrica Smith for use anywhere you would use a traditional carol. Like a lot of the songs in this collection it is ideal for choirs, but could be sung by a class or an assembly.
If you don’t want to get the whole collection for A$ 19.95, you can purchase for download your pick of the three versions available at Willow for A$3.95.
I made a backing to assist with learning the song. There are no instructions as to tempo or style so I go with what seems right to me. There are no tracks to listen to at Willow or on You-tube, so for people who don’t read music properly, like myself, this is a way to get an idea what it sounds like to see if it would suit your situation. If you are using these songs making a recording for You-Tube assists people greatly.
1 Shepherds in the fields, keeping watch at midnight,
Suddenly the sky filled with glorious light.
Angels winged like lightning, rank on endless rank,
Clouds of glory shining, golden voices rang.
Refrain
And the angels sang, “Glory in the highest,”
And the angels sang, “Peace upon the earth.
Glory to God, glory in the highest!
And peace on earth to people of goodwill.”
2 Then a mighty voice filled the sky with thunder.
The angel of the Lord stood before them there.
“Do not be afraid. I bring you news of great joy.
Today is born a Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Lord!”
3 “You will find the child lying in a manger,
Wrapped in bands of cloth, this will be the sign.”
Then the choirs of angels rose on every side,
Filled the sky with music, praising God on high!
© 2008 P A Smith administered by Willow Publishing.
This has a really pretty tune with lyrics that aren’t going to embarrass anyone – not always the case with material aimed at younger people! It would be perfect for a children’s choir at either a Nativity play, Christmas concert or the “family” Mass a lot of parishes have at the Christmas vigil.
I honestly don’t know why Willow doesn’t come to a mutually beneficial arrangement with you to use your demos on their site, because the lack of any of their own examples has got to have an impact on interest. After one listen to your demo I was able to sing along using the music preview on the Willow site, so I imagine it would be a wonderful resource for a teacher who can’t play piano to use in class to help their children learn and practise the piece.
If the sheet music has been laid out with a program that uses templates, it should be a relatively painless effort to get it into a format more suited to YouTube, and combined with your demo would make another useful resource for both sales and practise.
This is a fantastic site that I regularly visit, but, sadly, there’s probably a reasonable number of people involved in Catholic music who aren’t aware of what’s here.
Thanks, Chris.
I quite accidentally sat next to Patricia at the APMN conference recently and we had a chat. Word had got back to her that one of my backings I made for a song of hers was a bit outlandish – which it probably was – although I don’t think she had actually heard it. She wasn’t exactly pleased, but we had a pleasant chat nonetheless. I did point out that my site was for people who can’t just sit down and sight read her music and have the training to know what it should sound like. A simple piano performance at the Willow site would be a start – Peter Grant, for example, has some backings there that are very basic, but give enough of an idea with which to commence. A tempo and style would not go astray either!
I’ve been spoiled recently doing lots of David MacGregor material where he has YouTube clips and other assistance for less talented musicians. His recordings aren’t “John Burland recorded in Nashville” professional, but they are enough.
I can only surmise that as a talented musician and choir leader, Patricia believes her target audience is other talented musicians and choir leaders! I still think she would be locally Australian Catholic “famous” if we had further Willow compilations (ie AOV3). I think I recall Willow had a Facebook post recently asking why most of the music played in Australian churches was more than twenty years old, and I think the reasons are obvious.
Since Willow has compiled three collections of Patricia Smith’s material, maybe they could aggregate a downloadable AOV 3 just of their artists, since bound hymnals are somewhat anachronistic these days. Otherwise it is a job of work for us to find the new worthy Australian material.
BTW, I did mention your site to the 15 or so people who came to my talk at the conference. I was suggesting useful sites if people wanted to make their own backings of traditional material.
cheers
Geoff
I’d go back to square one and make AOV3 a stand-alone contemporary digital hymnal that includes overseas composers, essentially a liturgical best of AOV1 and 2 plus new material. I believe it important to stand-alone so that the entire contents pass the liturgically appropriate metric of the ACBC.
Just to be clear to any readers noting that music choices for my current congregation (posted in the comments to Sunday liturgies on this blog) and my website focus on traditional style hymns, I happily used AOV for around 15 years at my long-term previous parish and am not an idealogue. Some of the original AOV contents, however, aren’t appropriate for liturgy. However, there is nothing stopping an appendix of sorts being included for material suited to school or children liturgies or even recessional hymns, which are sung after Mass has ended: these don’t need to follow the ACBC liturgical metric, but still need to be doctrinally OK.
A good starting point for such a compilation would be Willow’s song selection guide for each Sunday which goes beyond AOV. Combine all the weeks of the year, closely look at including anything that’s rarely used, and there’s your base digital hymnal! I don’t mean it to sound like a 5 minute job of course!