Church Music

I mentioned this hymn briefly in this post but since it is in this collection I will give it a blog of its own.

This is a text based on Psalm 23 with other inspiration from all over the Bible. It was written by Henry Williams Baker and is set to ST COLUMBA. It fits in lots of places in the liturgy – Gifts, Communion, etc – and also works for Lent, Easter and funerals as well.

The sheet music can be purchased at OCP.

1.

The King of love my shepherd is,

Whose goodness fails me never;

I nothing lack if I am his,

And he is mine forever.

2.

Where streams of living water flow

With gentle care he leads me,

And where the verdant pastures grow,

With heav’nly food he feeds me.

3.

Perverse and foolish I have strayed,

But yet in love he sought me,

And on his shoulder gently laid,

And home, rejoicing, brought me.

4.

In death’s dark vale I fear no ill

With you, dear Lord, beside me;

Your rod and staff my comfort still,

Your cross before to guide me.

5.

You spread a table in my sight,

Your saving grace bestowing;

And O what joy and true delight

From your pure chalice flowing!

6.

And so through all the length of days

Your goodness fails me never:

Good Shepherd, may I sing your praise

Within your house forever.

A version with an added chorus:

This is a text from forty-three years ago set to a tune one hundred and fifty years old. The words are by Melvin Farrell and have a specific use for Christ the King. It is set to ICH GLAUB AN GOTT.

OCP provide the text in their preview and sell the sheet music.

The songs in OCP’s Guitar Accompaniment Book c2005 that I haven’t covered elsewhere are often of a genre not frequently used in Australia (Gospel, Spanish), require cantors, or are archaic.

This is the latter. It is a c19th translation by John M. Neale of a C6 Latin text by Venantius Honorius Fortunatus called Quem terra, pontus, aethera. It is a Marian hymn and is set to EISENACH.

1 The God whom earth and sea and sky
adore and laud and magnify,
whose might they own, whose praise they tell,
in Mary’s body comes to dwell.

2 O Mother blest! the chosen shrine
wherein the Architect divine,
whose hand contains the earth and sky,
has come in human form to lie:

3 Blest in the message Gabriel brought;
blest in the work the Spirit wrought;
most blest, to bring to human birth
the long-desired of all the earth.

4 O Lord, the Virgin-born, to you
eternal praise and laud are due,
whom with the Father we adore
and Holy Ghost for evermore. Amen.

I have blogged this Tom Kendzia song years ago when covering the Spirit and Song collections here. I have revisited it because OCP have a simpler, more assembly friendly version in their Guitar Accompaniment Book. They got rid of an interlude and a key change and it is none the worse for the arrangement. You can purchase the sheet music at OCP.

I made a backing for this arrangement.

This is an Advent song with a fine old hymn tune. It is from a Latin original Instantis adventum Dei by Charles Coffin and translated by Robert Campbell. It is set to OPTATUS VOTIS OMNION of unknown authorship but collected in the George Radcliffe Woodward, edited, Songs of Syon. It is all public domain.

The text is here and you could purchase the sheet music at OCP.

I tried a different mix of fake organ sounds in BIAB:

This is the sheet music with a different text.

I missed the music liturgy meeting, which is a shame because we may be heading back to normality (OK a new normal) with no community spread in Queensland of Covid 19.

I was going to play at mass last night but got sick with a cold (negative swab for Covid 19) so that was scrubbed. I had seen almost no viral illness for 2 months in suburban General Practice but the children were back at school a few weeks and some rhinovirus has started up. We normally wouldn’t know which virus, as we wouldn’t routinely test colds but we do now because they all get their covid swabs and they show rhinovirus rather than covid 19.

We have gone back to Mason’s Mass of Glory and Praise, although we will use the “Celtic Alleluia” rather than his Gospel Acclamation. We only use the two masses now and I think it is enough. We are back to singing the psalm response and so have only 1 person per 7 square metres.

Entrance: Sing to the Mountains  (Dufford) AOV 1/92

Psalm 144 (McKenna)

I will praise your name forever, my king and my God.

Gifts: Come To Me  (Norbet) AOV 1/37

Communion: Come to the Table (Burland) AOV NG 33

Thanksgiving: The Beatitudes  (Kearney) CWB II 456

Recessional: Deep In the Spirit (Andersen)

The ongoing quest for an acceptable Palm Sunday entrance song continues.

This Cyprian Consiglio song is better than some of the hymns for this purpose I’ve used in the past but its only a maybe. The text is a bit clunky, “loudly did they sing” is English not as it spoken is. The verses go too high for an assembly and I suppose really are only for a cantor, and the F natural notes aren’t.

OCP sell the sheet music and they provide the text in their preview.

I couldn’t recreate the finger cymbal feel so I leaned in the Latin direction for my BIAB backing.

The original benefits from less instrumentation:

Jumping from GIA back to OCP’s Guitar Accompaniment Book c2005, I find this Advent hymn by Harry Hagen set to CHRISTE SANCTORUM.

The text reads like a poem and sounds great without music.

OCP provide the text in their preview and will sell you the sheet music.

The last of the five songs being provided for a short time by GIA here, is this song by Christian Cosas. It is a WLP song, but they have been swallowed up by GIA.

It was the Association of Catholic Publishers 2019 song of the year. It appears to be an American organisation but that is not indicated in its title.

As written it is mainly a piece for soloist and choir, although I suppose an assembly could take over the cantor role and leave the responses to a few plants in the crowd. You have to love a song that instructs you to sing with hope. His text is not as direct as a John Bell lyric but he gets his point across nonetheless. It has an obligatory key change for the last verse that merges into a coda of recapitulating elements.

My backing is in slowish P&W mode with a build up to noise and puts the call and response parts at opposite ends of the stereo spectrum for clarity.

This is another of the “Hymns for Healing” posted by GIA here.

GIA provide the text for John Bell’s powerful hymn here. If you are strong enough, you sing it to the tune WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT by Georg Neumark.