Things are changing at our church for music – we actually had a meeting of the musicians and our priest about how to approach a season!
It was decided that music would be low key for Advent and we would have restrained music and silence after communion.
We will use the Advent Chant for the lighting of the candle.
For the Vigil where I usually play, we will use “To You O Lord I Lift Up My Soul” as a seasonal psalm. Since we usually have instrumental music during communion from a backing I prerecord, we will just let that run and leave it at that.
I now have to find restrained Advent music. In preparation for the meeting I jotted down some Advent songs:
Advent Chant
Like a Candle
A Voice in the Wilderness
Prepare the Way of the Lord (Boniwell)
O Emmanuel (Mangan)
O Come O Come Emmanuel
Emmanuel (Angrisano)
At the Turning Point of Time (MacGregor)
Maranatha ( Smith)
Maranatha, Lord Messiah
Advent Song
Advent Alleluia
Maranatha Come (O’Brien)
Joyful in Hope (Herry) – has an extra verse for Advent.
Dyball and Whelan didn’t get to funerals in their talk, but since there was really already far too much for an hour in their presentation, that is understandable.
Let’s see how we go without their guidance:
Starting with CWB II, which I have previously described as a marvellous work of scholarship and a great resource for liturgical advice but a poor hymn book. However, when it comes to funerals they don’t stint:
140 Guidelines on funerals, especially the choice of music, which is sure to upset some people, no football songs being recommended. Funerals seem to me to be only peripherally for the deceased and mostly for the bereaved, and I’m sure pastoral needs can be met while keeping funerals liturgically and symbolically functional.
149 When human voices cannot sing (text Shirley Erena Murray, ST COLUMBA) If it isn’t John Bell it’s Shirley Murray isn’t it. It is also in GA 236 and TIS 682.
153 Saints of God, come to his/her aid (text ICEL, music Phillip Duffy)
This is chant, so you are on your own, apart from this recent clip from Drew Wilson – many thanks. (By the way if you google funeral songs, you start to get ads for funeral insurance – what a wonderful world we live in.)
This was the last section of Fiona Dyball and Damian Whelan’s talk at the recent APMN conference. Funerals must have been too much, even working quickly, but I suspect in parishes we are all more likely to play at a funeral than an ordination – that is cathedral business and people are paid for that sort of thing.
Nonetheless we are pointed to CWB II 130-133:
130 notes of celebrating an ordination
131 Litany of the Saints you know this from the Easter Vigil, except this is even longer. It is not something I will touch with Band in a Box.
This tune is now best known for it’s appearance in “Bluey”.
133 notes on religious profession
Dyball and Whelan map out their music liturgy for holy orders:
Responsorial psalm
Psalm 116/117 (Heagney) CWB I 375 sheet music – I am lucky enough to have an old second hand copy of Catholic Worship Book I from 1985. maybe you have some in an old box somewhere at church.
As I have said several times, the one hour presentation by Fiona Dyball and Damian Whelan was a conference on its own. By the time we got here, I think they were up to warp speed.
CWB II 134-139 has suggestions:
134 Short notes on the sacrament and the place of music in the sacrament.
NB the link in the handout isn’t correct – it takes you to a Marty Haugen setting. It doesn’t appear to be available as a download from GIA, but I also have it in a collection Songs & Prayers from Taizé.
Lead Kindly Light (Warner) sheet music Steven C Warner’s adaptation of John Henry Newman’s words, but you wouldn’t know from the cover. Now, you really want to be compared to the Notre Dame Folk Choir don’t you so why not give it a whirl. The refrain of this has umpteen melody lines for the choir – I picked one.
Lead Kindly Light (text John Henry Newman, music Maeve Heaney) The sheet music is available at Willow, despite the suggestion in the handout that it remains unpublished. Pitched very low and may need to be taken to a higher key for many, but her version is sweet cool water on a hot day. I couldn’t get what I wanted in a backing from the preview there, but here are three attempts:
There are a few very familiar tunes there, but that is fine – participation is enhanced by known tunes as powerful as these.
Apropos of nothing, I would like to propose a new text for KINGSFOLD that might lift some spirits at an anointing.
There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden And his name is Wiggly Woo There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden And all that he can do Is wiggle all night and wiggle all day The people around here, they all do say There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden And his name is Wiggly Woo
I appear to have accidentally skipped this song when I was doing CWB II. To make up for that here are two backings – the first is probably too noisy and fast:
123 Take from us now Text paraphrased by Bernard Kirkpatrick from Ezekiel 11:14-21, Isaiah 58:1-11, Micah 7:2-7,18-20, Roman 6:16-23) O WALY WALY
Their advice for a responsorial Psalm is:
Fill us with your love, O Lord and we will sing for joy CWB I (Roger Heaney) sheet music
Other songs they suggest:
Bear with one another (Haugen) sheet music I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this gem from Marty Haugen. Be careful the melody splits for a couple of bars in the chorus.
Touch the earth lightly Text: Shirley Erena Murray Music: Tony Alonso sheet music I have blogged backings of several other settings of this worthy text, but not Alonso’s so here it is.
I received some extra material from Fiona Dyball and Damian Whelan about their use of Michael Mangan’s “We Turn to You”:
RECONCILIATION
Michael Mangan’s “We Turn To You” has been used in the Sacrament of Penance at Loreto Mandeville Hall, Toorak in the following way:
On our Reconciliation Retreat day (which begins with a parent and student workshop in the morning), the girls write a short “Sorry” prayer. Their teachers prepare this with a time of reflection, asking the girls to think about things that they would like to improve in their lives. They choose one main thing that they will aim to improve and write a prayer about it. Once completed these prayers are placed on individual PowerPoint slides with the child’s name. These are then inserted into the hymn “We Turn To You”.
Refrain
Verse 1
Refrain
4-5 Sorry prayers
Refrain
Verse 2
Refrain
4-5 sorry prayers
(etc)
The hymn and “Sorry” prayers are used when the children come forward for individual confession and assist in keeping this time a silent and prayerful one. Parents and family members are invited to sing each time the song appears on the screen. The hymn and quiet music playing in between allows for privacy to be maintained during the time that the children go to individual confession. At Loreto this happens in designated spots around our school chapel.
When the handout got to confirmation, they don’t mention CWB II’s selections this time but it won’t hurt to go through them. My copy of CWB II has an awful lot of penciled in approximate chords here. In its defence, there are quite useful pieces of liturgy revision scattered throughout the first volume of CWB II:
If you type “the lord is my light” into my search machine you find many others, but I still think the best ever is by John Bell, from the collection I Will Not Sing Alone:
They suggest two songs for Baptism that aren’t also recommended in CWB II:
This was the title of easily the most useful presentation that I attended at the recent APMN conference. It was run by Fiona Dyball and Damian Whelan and it was basically advice for parish music liturgy teams on what works. They demonstrated the music with no time wasted.
The only issue is that it should have been a whole day not one hour, so I gather the idea was to take it home and unpack it like a zip file. I contacted Fiona and she was happy for me to go through it on my blog, probably for that reason. She also sent some additional ideas for reconciliation, which was very kind. I will add a few of my own suggestions, for which Fiona and Damian are not responsible.
They gave a handout with lots of useful links – I would add AOV’s music selections and that sixmaddens thing:
Using that as a guide I am going to go through things much more slowly.
They list hymnals and music sources: AOV 1, 2, and NG; CWB I and II and digital downloads. For digital downloads they add Michael Herry’s archive (Marist Music) to Willow/GIA/OCP, but I would also suggest Hope Publishing as always being worth a look. For most parishes CWB1 is an unlikely resource these days, but many still use Gather Australia – in a lot of ways still better than CWB II. After our recent conversation here about American churches often having to be either OCP or GIA, it is nice to note the varied sources.
They note that CWB II is the official collection of liturgical music for Australian Catholic worship. I would suggest that official doesn’t mean best. The drawbacks of CWB II are well known and I don’t detect that it has been received in the parishes, which have in many cases clung to whatever hymn book they have used for the last fifty years or have given up on hymnals altogether, using multiple sources, especially downloads, and projection. CWB II is an extraordinary work of scholarship and cathedral music but also an offence to all guitar players. It is a collection with a lot traditional resources and these can be accessed in the public domain (eg see Liturgy Share) and a second hand copy of Together in Song will give you the missing chords. I still bought a copy of CWB II and do find it useful, but I believe it is a failure as a parish hymn book.
They suggest Mass Shalom as an inter-generational setting, available for purchase here. I haven’t played it in years and recall I found it difficult on guitar but it is certainly singable and was sensitively refurbished by Paul Mason. I would recommend that or Taylor’s Mass of St Francis or Mason’s Mass of Glory and Praise. My unscientific impression is that it is those three that have penetrated into the suburban parishes of Australia.
They recommend the Celtic Alleluia, which we use every week. With a bit of help from correspondents here, we have abandoned the verses provided and sing the acclamation as listed for each week. It is a small job to make them fit – the short ones need repetition and the longer ones ingenuity. If you don’t have it in AOV or elsewhere you can buy it here.
They leave the psalms for individual sacraments, but Amanda McKenna’s simple singable responses are still great for participation, if your parish is never likely to have a cantor singing the verses. All that depends on what psalm text we will be singing in the future too. Paul Mason gave a talk at the conference about what a bin fire the English language psalms have become and if he has no idea what’s going to happen then heaven help the rest of us.
I’ll take each sacrament and go through their selections with some commentary and suggestions of my own along the way. Once I have finished you will be astonished what some people can do in less than an hour.
I've worked my way through the As One Voice books and other collections making backings on Band in a Box to help me (& you if you're interested) learn new songs for church. This is aimed at churches and musicians that own the collections but haven't exploited them fully. If you don't have them they are certainly worth buying. This site is educational, nonprofit and designed to enhance the commercial prospects of songwriters. This site does not distribute copyrighted sheet music.
Disclaimer
Any opinions expressed here are personal views and not the responsibility of any Church.
All music backings posted are created by myself and the intention is for them to be used to learn the songs. If any copyright holder wishes me to cease publicising and promoting their wares and directing people to where sheet music can be legally purchased please let me know.
Mason’s “Mass of Glory and Praise”
To access my backings for Paul Mason's mass go to Feb 2011 in the archive.
