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.
I’m looking at hymns that GIA has posted here.
This one is by Adam Tice asks of God the question “will you bring something good” out of the pain of existence.
It is set to INTERCESSOR by C Hubert H Perry.
I tried to make a backing but 3/2 is not natural for BIAB:
Small Church Music have an organ backing for this tune, which is much better:
GIA has posted , for a short time, some hymns to help us through the current state of the world. You can download the sheet music from GIA here.
Mary Louise Bringle wrote the text of this song and is set to the lyrical tune TEMPLE OF PEACE by William P Rowan.
The text is here and while it says adapted by Mack Wilberg the text is unaltered-Wilberg merely set it to his own tune that is unusable outside of a choir context. GIA sells the fuller version here.
I made a backing with chords from the reverse chord identifier and BIAB:
Just for fun this Wilberg’s setting – interesting but not for an assembly:
GIA sent an e-mail about some Hymns for Healing for which they were posting sheet music until September 1st. There are five of them to look at and “Shelter Me” by Father Joncas was so good I thought I’d look at these as well.
If you are looking for songs of lament you go to John Bell of course and this song that he based on a Norwegian text by Hans-Olav Mork is extraordinary.
For now, you can download the sheet music for free at GIA.
As usual when faced with piano music and no chords and being no keyboard player I played with the reverse chord finder and Band in a Box and came up with something nothing like John Bell did but there you go.
The music is a little curtailed with restricted attendance but we are still doing the Mass parts from the Mass of St Francis with spoken a Psalm and Gospel Acclamation. There is no collection so no music for Gifts.
Entrance: All Are Welcome (Haugen)
Communion: One Bread One Body (Foley) AOV 1/129
or: You Are My Rock (Chinn) – for our parish feast day at St Peters
Recessional: Christ be Our Light (Farrell) AOV 2/3
This is a communion song new to me by Gregory Norbet. It has unfortunate leaps up to a held D at times that will require dropping the key from F to D for groaners like myself – I know the first note will then be a low A but active participation above all the things.
The Weston priory is nice enough to provide the text – they do own it after all – and the sheet music can be purchased at OCP.
I may have let BIAB’s trombone solo too high in the mix on this backing:
This is lovely:
This is James E. Moore Jr’s fine setting of this oft set Psalm. There are enough variations and complications in the verses to leave them to a cantor as suggested.
It’s not one I’ve heard around here but it appears in high rotation in the USA.
The text is at Cantus Mundi. This is a rare GIA piece in this OCP collection and GIA sell the sheet music here.
