This is a lovely Bernadette Farrell song that I haven’t heard before. It has a lovely direct text to sing a social gospel. It has a fair range but remains singable.
The text is here. (scroll down) OCP has the sheet music to purchase for download and a sound sample.
The snippet at OCP is organ and choir but it sounds a gentler folk song to me:
56 in my survey of OCP’s Guitar Accompaniment Book is by Katharina von Schlegel and translated by Jane Borthwick. I like old hymns that don’t have triumphalist or militaristic ideas – this is a beaut.
The text is at Hymnary and it is set to FINLANDIA, for which I have blogged a backing here.
25/3/2026
This was very lazy of me:
1. Be still, my soul! the Lord is on your side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to your God to order and provide;
In ev’ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly friend
Thru’ thorny ways leads to a joyful end.2. Be still, my soul! your God does undertake
To guide the future as he has the past;
Your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul! the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he lived below.3. Be still, my soul! when dearest friends depart
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shall you better know his love, his heart,
Who comes to soothe your sorrow and your fears.
Be still, my soul! your Jesus can repay
From his own fullness all he takes away.4. Be still, my soul! the hour is hast’ning on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still my soul! when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.
Bob Fabing SJ wrote this song of praise based on Psalm 116.
OCP will sell you an MP3 of it if you like, but not the sheet music as far as I can see. Someone else had that trouble and posted to his Facebook page but there was no reply.
The text, which I also can’t find anywhere, has a minor glitch in that verse three of five is sung in the voice of God and the rest isn’t. The song has a fair range with a nasty held D.
So… if you have the Guitar Accompaniment Book and can hit that D then you can sing along with this jaunty backing.
The original – much slower and restrained:
Chris Brunelle’s version works much better:
I have been known to work out the chords of songs by watching You-tube clips and these are pretty simple, so watching Chris’s hands might allow you to play along with him and learn the song even if you cannot purchase the sheet music to download.
Because the parishes I play at have little tradition of singing older hymns, many of the songs I’m picking up in OCP’s Guitar Accompaniment Book are in that genre.
This is a Marian song suitable for Easter set to a very old tune REGINA CAELI. The text is here and while OCP has the sheet music it should be available in the public domain as well.
Godsongs has looked into this hymn here.
A rather harsh sounding backing:
Who’d have thought Carey Landry would write a piece of music with directions saying “spirited”. (unfair)
This song has baptismal and sprinkling rite uses but could also be used for sending forth.
The sheet music is available at OCP where the text is in the sample and you can hear a longish snippet of the song, which does not sound the least bit spirited.
This does:
To my surprise I can’t see where I’ve blogged this carol anywhere, probably because it’s not in As One Voice. So for completeness…
OCP set this song to MUELLER by James R. Murray but is it just as often set to CRADLE SONG by William J. Kirkpatrick.
The text is at Hymnary. The first two verses are attributed to Martin Luther and the third is by John T. McFarland.
MUELLER:
CRADLE SONG:
I can’t do much with this one, but Hymnary has the text in Latin and the sheet music. The text is two separate Latin chants brought together apparently.
Bad BIAB organ:
Listen to this instead:
Since I couldn’t make this work on BIAB I asked it to try a jazz arrangement with melodic embellishment and it came up with something totally inappropriate.
This is a bilingual (Latin/English) song for Mary by Gregory Norbet.
It is pretty thing but has several long held D’s lying in wait for the unwary.
The sheet music can be purchased at OCP. The text is here (scroll down – it is the first Ave Maria under 3. Contemporary)
There are an awful lot of versions of this song on YouTube, which usually means it is very popular in the USA. These are just three:
47 At the Name of Jesus (Walker)
Number 48 in the Guitar Accompaniment Book is this 10th century chant set to the 19th century French tune ATTENDE DOMINE. OCP gives five verses of Latin and five of English in Melvin Farrell’s translation. The Latin text is here with a different translation.
The sheet music is available at OCP.
Making chant metrical really doesn’t work but BIAB knows no other way.
Based on Phillipians 2:5-7 this song is 46 in OCP’s Guitar Accompaniment Book. It is by Caroline Maria Noel and here set to KING’S WESTON by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The text is at Hymnary along with details of the tunes that were used before this setting. The sheet music for Williams piece can be purchased at OCP where the copyright is attributed to Oxford University Press. On Hymnary there are images from English hymnals with no copyright note for the tune so…
Here’s a question: Is this song still copyright in the USA but public domain in England?
The tune is published in 1931 and Williams died in 1958.
Here’s some thinking music in the form of yet more fake organ on BIAB. This tune has a rather an ominous feeling to it.
