Church Music

Entrance: Joy to the World

Psalm 127 (McKenna)

Happy are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways.

Gifts: What Child Is This

Communion: Summoned by Love  (O’Brien/Watts) AOV 2/18

Recessional: Angels We Have Heard On High

A long time ago in a parish far far away a liturgy team put together the Christmas liturgy of all time. Instead of a few hoary old carols there was a pre-mass extravanganza of readings and marvellously selected songs like a carols and lessons service. The mass liturgy itself was innovative, polished and practiced and was delivered with perfection and passion by the enthusiastic musicians and singers and liturgists.

… and didn’t the poor priest cop it. “We just wanted to sing carols, see the inside of a church for a change and get out,” said the less regular parishioners to their perplexed shepherd.

Hence selections for Christmas 2026 – as close as possible to 2025, 2024, etc ad infinitum.

Midnight Mass in George Town will of course be at 9pm with carols from 8.30pm. It will be still be light and something approaching summer weather has finally arrived in Tasmania.

Carols before Mass:

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Once in Royal David’s City

The First Noel

Star Child (Murray/Young)

Angels We Have Heard On High

Mary’s Boy Child

Mass of St Francis – as always – it’s the only one the assembly here knows.

Entrance: O Come All Ye Faithful

Christmas Psalm (Farrell)

Celtic Alleluia

Gifts: Away in a Manger

Communion: Silent Night

O Holy Night

Recessional: Joy to the World

We have a combined churches Carols night tonight, and all the arrangements of all the carols are different to what we will play next week so I will quickly have to unlearn all the tweaks for tonight.

Thank you to Chris W and Ryan for broadening the palate of music suggestions here for all these years and providing a rolling resource for years to come. All contributions of music selections are gratefully accepted – I have discovered many interesting hymns over the years from this source and I appreciate it.

This blog gets 700-1000 hits a day. It used to be mainly Australia and the US but recently there is a lot of traffic from China for some reason. There are also hits from all over the world. I can tell music groups are using it for practice because a random song will suddenly have hundreds of hits out of the blue. I hope it is still of use to people putting together liturgies.

Merry Christmas.

This is another of Monica Brown’s mantras that indulges her skill in mixing up time signatures. It is a sung prayer for private contemplation that would still fit in liturgy.

You can down load the whole sheet music collection, Holy Ground, that contains this mantra for $A5 at Emmaus.

Enfold me in you love/peace/grace.

Enfold me in you love/peace/grace.

Encircle me O God,

Surround me with your love/peace/grace.

Come fill me with your love/peace/grace.

© 1997 Monica Brown

This Monica Brown mantra from Holy Ground, is based on Luke 23:46.

You can buy the sheet music for almost nothing at Emmaus.

She is very fond of changes in time signatures in these mantras but it seems to work.

Into your hands I commit myself.

Into your hands I entrust all that is and all that holds my heart.

Into your hands I commit.

© 1994 Monica Brown

This mantra by Monica Brown is based on John 6:67-69 and has liturgical uses (eg Gifts) as well as being for private contemplation.

The sheet music is on the collection Holy Ground ($A5 at Emmaus).

To whom shall we go if not to you, O God.

You alone have the words of everlasting life.

We believe in You.

© 1992 Monica Brown

This is another marvellous mantra from Monica Brown that we used back at St Edwards in the day. It is a sentiment from the psalms and still most relevant for now.

The text is at Emmaus and the collection, Holy Ground, costs $A5 to download.

I blogged this some time ago, but made another backing:

I came across a hard copy of Monica Brown‘s book of mantras. Monica Brown is an Australian composer whose music just seemed to be there when I was at St Edward’s, Daisy Hill back in the late 1990s and 2000s, as part of the fabric and used in many liturgies.

These mantras would be a powerful tool for prayerful mindfulness.

This is the title track of the collection and I have blogged it before.

The whole collection can be downloaded for $A5 at Emmaus Productions. As soon as you click on “sheet music” it is in your cart, but it is only five dollars, making her pretty close to Brother Michael Herry’s giving it away philosophy.

The lyrics are at Emmaus.

I don’t know that this new backing is any better than the last one I made.

The last song in the collection, Hymns and Spiritual Songs Vol 1 from Liturgical Song, is this song for the Easter Sequence.

This is Paul Mason’s setting of c11 text by Wipo of Burgundy, Victimae Paschale Laudes in the ICEL translation.

For the full effect, Mason suggest a tenor voice cantor, a female voice cantor, SATB choir and assembly. Specifically, V1 – C1 + C2 in parts, V2 C1, V3 C2, V4 starts with C1 and ends with C2, V5&6 C1 + C2 in parts. It blossoms out in the alleluias, and it doesn’t at all come across in a BIAB backing. I’d love to hear a recording of the the full arrangement.

Christians, to the Paschal Victim
offer sacrifice and praise.

The sheep are ransomed by the Lamb;
and Christ, the undefiled,
has sinners to his Father reconciled.

Death with life contended: combat
strangely ended!
Life’s own Champion, slain,
yet lives to reign.

Tell us, Mary: say
what you did see upon the way?
The tomb the Living did enclose;
I saw Christ’s glory as He rose!

The angels there attesting;
shroud with grave-clothes resting.
Christ, my hope, has risen:
He goes before you into Galilee.

That Christ is truly risen
from the dead we know.
Victorious King, Thy mercy show!

Alleluia x6

Christ has become our paschal sacrifice; let us feast with joy in the Lord.

Alleluia x6

This is a very good collection that does not need all the artillery that the arrangements suggest, but will carry it off if you have the multiple cantors and choirs. For your $A40 you get twenty songs, with seven having an additional full score. You get Paul Mason’s wonderfully obssessive liturgy notes, so what’s not to like. I’d would like more single sheets and samples of the music available online for those of us who can’t just sit and sight read a piece. I hope Volume 2 emerges as promised.

Paul Mason has included this arrangement by himself and Seth Harsh of William Henry Monk’s hymn in the collection Hymns and Spiritual Songs Vol 1 (available at Liturgical Song).

Rounding out the nine new releases is a wonderful contemporary piano arrangement by Seth Harsh of “Abide With Me.” This version has been featured in Mass For You At Home (MFYAH).

I blogged the AOV version here , but this arrangement has a piano introduction added and some subtle changes to the chords.

My backing does it no justice – it always sounds like a piano roll when I just enter all the piano notes into BIAB.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Paul Mason used a C15 Dominican chant for this text as a basis for his version of the Stabat Mater, rather than the usual Gregorian chant. As for the text, I’m sure Edward Caswall did his best for the translation but it does sound better in Latin.

Mason not only gives you music and text but expert exposition in which he refutes the usual attribution to Jacopone da Todi and traces its earliest appearance to C13 Bologna. This lament’s use is at Stations of the Cross and Holy Week.

You can find it in Hymns and Spiritual Songs Vol 1 at Liturgical Song.

I had real trouble with this and made three backings a varying levels of blah. I ended up slowing his tempo on the one I like best:

This is even slower:

… and this just sounds bad at his tempo – not Mason’s fault! Maybe it would be better with minimal to no accompaniment.

1 At the cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.

2 Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,
All his bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has passed.

3 O how sad and sore distressed,
Was that Mother highly blest
Of the sole begotten One!

4 Christ above in torment hangs,
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying, glorious Son.

5 Is there one who would not weep,
Whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ’s dear Mother to behold?

6 Can the human heart refrain
From partaking in her pain,
In that Mother’s pain untold?

7 Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled,
She beheld her tender Child,
All with bloody scourges rent.

8 For the sins of his own nation
Saw him hang in desolation
Till his spirit forth he sent.

9 O thou Mother! Font of love,
Touch my spirit from above,
Make my heart with thine accord.

10 Make me feel as thou hast felt;
Make my soul to glow and melt
With the love of Christ, my Lord.

11 Holy Mother, pierce me through,
In my heart each wound renew
Of my Savior crucified.

12 Let me share with thee his pain,
Who for all my sins was slain,
Who for me in torment died.

13 Let me mingle tears with thee,
Mourning him who mourned for me,
All the days that I may live.

14 By the cross with thee to stay;
There with thee to weep and pray,
All I ask of thee to give.

15 Virgin of all Virgins best!
Listen to my fond request:
Let me share thy grief divine.

In the absence of a clip for this version here it is in Latin Gregorian chant.