This a lovely hymn by Richard Connolly. He usually set the hymn texts of the Australian poet James McAuley, but these words he wrote himself.
The text and melody are at Hymnary but you might already have it in the Australian Hymn Book or Together in Song. This would make a rousing recessional.
This isn’t really my style of music but his tunes generally have something in them to rise above the ordinary.
This is a stunning version by the Choir of Trinity College, University Melbourne, showing off their talent for dynamics.
I’m going through the hymn section of GA looking for songs I have not already blogged. This one is one of Jacques Berthier’s chants from TAIZE.
Hymnary have the text and the sheet music of the ostinato refrain. The text of the verse is a different translation of the latin text than here but I’m sure you can pick it up by listening.
My backing has the refrain tune and then the tune for the verse in the opposite channel.
You can hear the words for the verse in this performance:
I can skip a few more that I have already blogged to get to this song by the matchless Ruth Duck. I like the sincere simplicity of the text a lot and the tune is memorable.
The text is at hymnary and the sheet music is available in this collection of her songs at GIA.
This song has a text by John Henry Newman and is set to the tune RICHMOND by Thomas Haweis.
The text is at Hymnary where they recommend three other tunes, but they do have information, including the sheet music, about this setting at this page.
Haugen’s Exsultet is 406 but I won’t make a backing for that since it has gone liturgically stale due to the change in the text and it goes from 3/4 to 2/4 to 5/8 to 4/4 and BIAB is not going to do that much time signature shifting.
…which means with all the songs I’ve already blogged I can skip to 408 in Gather Australia. This is a David Haas song that is a Gospel Acclamation, although I suppose we should be doing the ones prescribed. Perhaps for a gathering where the word is proclaimed outside a mass context it would be suitable.
The text is here and the sheet music is available in this collection at GIA. They also give you a snippet to listen to at this page.
Gather Australia was published in 1995. It was a collaboration between the National Liturgical Music Convention and GIA with the support of the Melbourne Archdiocese. The original “As One Voice” was published in 1992 but was independent of the Catholic hierarchy so GA, while it had many of the same songs, looked a more traditional competitor.
Last year I got my edition of GA with chords for most of the songs. The melody line edition is still often found second hand, but accompaniment editions are hard to find and my copy looks as if it was printed to order.
I going to start a survey of songs in GA that are not in AOV and which I have not covered elsewhere. I doubt I’ll ever get back to the volume of backings I used to do but I’ll see where this takes me. AOV has an OCP bias and unsurprisingly GA has a GIA bias so that may make for a fruitful survey. I’m also hoping that I find some local gems that I haven’t come across before.
I hope to get back to the OCP “Guitar Accompaniment Book” and the “Voices As One Vol 2” songs that I have yet to complete, but this might be a more manageable task for now.
I’m going to start in the sections for hymns and songs and the first one that I haven’t yet blogged is the wonderful Marty Haugen‘s “One Ohana.” Ohana is a Hawaiian word for family. It could be used as a children’s song but has liturgical use on the theme of creation and welcoming.
The text is here. If the thought of singing a single word of Hawaiian origin is too hard “one ohana” can be replaced with “one great family”, but that kind of defeats the point of the song.
The sheet music is available at GIA in a collection called “Tales of Wonder”, which was originally a one act play.
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.
