Church Music

If you are looking at a Australian catholic music, Brother Michael Herry is pleasantly unavoidable.

His sheet music is all available to download for free at the Marist Brothers website, which unfortunately is not a pleasure. Don’t bother with their title page or their search engine. It is better to just google his name and what you want, or go to this page. You will find psalms for every week of every liturgical year, chants for every week and folios of songs.

I did God of Surprises last year and will look at the collection Dare to Dream now.

I have blogged this song before as part of As One Voice, and at the time hadn’t actually used it, although it is one of his most known songs. I suppose it must have been the St Peter’s, Rochedale team that got me using it, because it something I turn to frequently now for Eucharist. I don’t play it quite as slowly as he does, but it can’t be rushed. I’m putting it up again to point to where the sheet music is available. You can hear the Marists’ version and download the sheet music here.

This is my same backing from 2011.

Lord, to whom shall we go?
You are our bread, broken and shared,

Lord, to whom shall we go?
Yours are the words of life

1 Our fathers ate, yet their hunger remained.
Their hearts were not satisfied.

2 O Lord, you feed us with the finest of wheat,
our pledge of eternal life.

3 The bread you give is the living bread,
your flesh for the life of the world.

4 Your word, O Lord, is a lamp for my steps;
a light for my path of life.

© 1993 Michael Herry

This is a joyful singable alleluia by Fintan O’Carroll and Christopher Walker that is widely used. At my previous parish we used a selection from one of many supplied verses that matched the verse for the week most closely.

The practice at my current practice was to sing the refrain and say the verse for that week. In an effort to get more mass parts sung through, we have been singing the verse instead. Quite often it can be fitted into the three lines pretty seamlessly, but I had had to resort to some repetition for shorter ones and a little editing for longer ones.

Since a lot of parishes use this, I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on which of the three solutions is the most practical, liturgical and pastoral – picking one of the alternate verses, saying the exact verse or adapting the verse for each week.

After all those Paul Mason’s psalms to discover, Gen Bryant has brought us even more.

She used some of her time during lock down composing psalms, which will be published by Willow later in the year.

For now, they are part of her Seeking Stillness series. The psalms can also be listened to on their own.

I hope to look at them more once they are available as sheet music.

The last “psalm” in Paul Mason’s Psalms for All Time is from Exodus 15 and it is used as one of the Response Canticles during the Easter Vigil.

The text is in your missal or available as set by Kate Keefe.

I have been working from the first edition, but you can buy the improved second edition with an extra psalm, a revised layout and still only less than $A30 from Liturgical Song. There is all the sheet music (some with extra instrumental parts), an extensive commentary of each psalm (worth the the price of admission alone), planning help and even guitar chords.

This is what they say about the series:

Psalms for All Time equips parishes and schools with a core repertoire of prayerful, memorable, contemporary settings of the psalms for every Mass and liturgical celebration. The responses are instantly singable by the entire assembly, yet bear the weight of repeated singing. In each psalm setting, the response and verses form a single integrated song, drawing the assembly into the experience of the whole psalm.

The sprung metre verses of the Grail text are set to attractive melodies using contemporary composition techniques for melodic, harmonic and rhythmic prosody and contrast. This greatly helps in praying the psalms over and over, being able to readily recall the melodies to which the texts are set.

Psalms for All Time is a method for equipping a parish or school with psalm resources to enable the responsorial psalm to be sung regularly at Mass. The Church is so concerned to encourage the singing of the responsorial psalm that it has designated twenty-five common seasonal psalms, which can be used to replace the psalm of the day for any given Mass. In this way a community can slowly grow their psalm music repertoire, yet still be able to sing the responsorial psalm at all Masses.

After a while most communities will have learned all twenty-five seasonal psalms. They are then ready to learn additional psalm music repertoire so that the psalm of the day can be sung instead of a common seasonal psalm. At that time, Psalms For All Time: Volume 2 can be introduced to the community.

I have purchased Volume 2 and will get around to it in the future.

This is Paul Mason’s setting for the fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A, but is also useful elsewhere in Ordinary Time, Advent and for marriage and confirmation.

It is from the collection Psalms for All Time.

The text is in your missal but it is the same as set here by Kate Keefe.

This is a common psalm for use at the Easter Vigil that I don’t think turns up on any Sunday but I think is on a weekday mass.

It is from Paul Mason’s Psalms for All Time. What is different here is that the response (“His love is everlasting”) is repeated after each line rather than each stanza. He does it in groups of three lines with a different tune for each line – otherwise it would get monotonous. You really are going to have to see the music written out and follow his instructions, as he has the verses for two different responsorial psalms with the same response and differing verses and it is a little confusing.

For those who can follow along in his book or a missal here is a backing.

Entrance:  Seek Ye First (Lafferty) AOV 1/48

Psalm 144 (McKenna)

The Lord is near to all who call him.

Gifts: Open My Eyes  (Manibusan) AOV 1/166

Communion: Christ Light, Shining in the Darkness (Grant) CWBII 468

Recessional: Send Us Out (Bryant) AOVD

Entrance: Gather As One  (McKenna) AOV NG 48

Psalm 102 (McKenna)

The Lord is kind and merciful; slow to anger and rich in compassion.

Gifts: Harvest (Grant) AOVD

Communion:  Mercy from the Heart of God (O’Brien/Ogilive) AOVD

Recessional: Sing of the Lord’s Goodness   (Sands) AOV 1/131

* I’m unexpectedly away this week and we are fortunate to have a backup guitarist and singer. To keep things simple, so he doesn’t have to use overheads, I did an alternative list that is just from AOV 1&2 so they can use the hymn books.

Seek Ye First

Hosea

One Body

Companions on the Journey

Entrance: Come, Now is the Time to Worship (Doerksen) AOV NG 29

Psalm 94 (McKenna)

O that today you would listen to his voice!

Harden not your hearts.

Gifts: A New Commandment CWB II 443 (Unknown?)

Communion: The Summons  (Maule-Bell) AOV NG 149

Recessional: We Are Many Parts  (Haugen) AOV 1/86

Entrance: Come to the Feast (Haugen) AOV 1/151

Psalm 62 (McKenna)

My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.

Gifts: Will You Love Me?   (Boniwell) AOV 1/40

Communion: My Soul Is Thirsting (Angrisano) AOV NG 97

Recessional: Send Us Out (Bryant) AOVD