Church Music

This text from Shirley Murray in Alleluia Aotearoa, is useful for baptism, confirmation and commissioning as well as Trinity and Pentecost.

The text is at Hope Publishing. They give four settings and AA another two and a quick look at You Tube found another two so you are spoiled for choice. Some have been written specifically for this text and others are 8.7.8.7 and so fit fine.

The first four settings have sheet music at Hope.

OMNI DIE by David Gregof Corner (c17):

LOVING SPIRIT by Hal H. Hopson:

BETH by Rusty Edwards:

ANGSANA by Swee Hing Lim:

FELICITY by Colin Gibson is in AA:

David Dell’s setting, also from AA:

… or you could set it to ELLEN:

…or RESTORATION:

Hymnary says it is also sung to CHHUN-BIN but I’ll leave that one to you people!

OMNE DIE wins the YouTube poll.

Shirley Murray rewrote the verses of this already revised George Kitchen text to good effect. I blogged the earlier version here. The triumphalism of some old texts is jarring.

Murrays’s adapted text and the sheet music is at Hope Publishing.

This is a wedding song from Shirley Murray in Alleluia Aotearoa.

The text is at at Hope Publishing, where, like AA, they set it to KREMSER, a Dutch tune collected by Eduard Kremser.

It is also set to THE ROAD AND MILES TO DUNDEE, a traditional Scottish tune. Being public domain, this is a good example of the benefits of the Small Church Music site. There are BIAB files, MIDI files, PDF files etc etc there that can be very useful.

I still made my own backing to the tune that must have influenced one of the versions of “Away in a Manger”.

Entrance: Seek Ye First (Lafferty) AOV 1/48

Gifts: Mercy from the Heart of God (O’Brien/Ogilive) AOVD

Communion: Beatitudes (Balhoff/Ducotte)

Recessional: Bring Forth the Kingdom (Haugen) AOV 2/4

Entrance: Christ Light, Shining in the Darkness (Grant) CWBII 468

Gifts: Blessed Be Our God  (McKenna) AOV NG 13

Communion: They’ll Know We Are Christians (Scholtes) AOV 1/130

Recessional:  Galilee Song (Andersen) AOV 1/15

Entrance: Prepare the Way of the Lord (Boniwell) CWB II 250

Gifts: Mercy from the Heart of God (O’Brien/Ogilive) AOVD

Communion: Here I Am Lord (Schutte) AOV 1/90

Recessional: Send Down the Fire (Haugen) AOV 2/164

PS

18/1/2023

I was actually away in Melbourne for the weekend and so didn’t play locally. We went to St Francis’s church in Lonsdale St. The church was full for the 9.30am mass. There was a cantor and organist. From up the back it didn’t appear that there was any participation in the music by the assembly, but I suppose a lot of people there weren’t locals, so it is hard to see how that could be achieved. They do try I think, as the tunes for the hymns used are well know in one sense – eg HYFRYDOL and PICARDY, but perhaps they were new to the younger audience.

They used Philip Carmody’s MISSA SIMPLEX. They also use “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again”, which is somewhat rebellious. The prayers were very social justice orientated and Cardinal Pell was prayed for the Sunday after he died, but no other mention was made of him. So I guess this is a “liberal”, for Melbourne, inner city parish with traditional hymnody. If so, I wonder how that works only a few tram stops from the Archbishop at St Patrick’s.

Entrance: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

Gifts: Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation

Communion: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Recessional: Organ music

Entrance: We Three Kings

Gifts: Star Child (Shirley Erina Murray – Carlton R. Young) AOV 2/43  

Communion: The First Noel – verses 3-5

City of God (Schutte) AOV 1/57

Having Christmas on Sunday really plays up with the usual liturgies – Holy Family and Baptism of the Lord get bumped to weekday masses and we get Mary, Epiphany and then into Ordinary Time. I think I used to understand this when I studied it at ACU. Out of an abundance of caution I won’t be playing this week as I am still symptomatic from Covid and I want to be sure of things before I am out and about too much.

I wanted to start using “Mercy from the Heart” of God by Monica O’Brien and Gina Ogilvie, whenever mercy comes up in the readings, but I will get around to it. It can be purchased at Willow Digital Publishing.

We have been playing one of my old backing tracks for the start of communion so the musicians can have Eucharist then get ready to start playing a hymn after everyone else has received. This works when numbers are low because if you go first then play you have hardly started and communion is over, but if you play a communion song immediately you leave the priest standing for a couple of verses. This suits the liturgical flow better and even now with numbers coming up a bit with warmer weather I will leave things as they are. What I am getting around to saying is that my choices for communion look odd because I am using an instrumental for actual communion then a hymn follows.

What I was going to play was:

Entrance:  Christ be Our Light  (Farrell) AOV 2/3

Gifts: Mercy from the Heart of God (O’Brien/Ogilive) AOVD

Communion: Blessed One  (Thompson) VAO 2/215

Recessional: Joy to the World.

After checking out the future of OCP’s Breaking Bread, I will return to the Shirley Erena Murray texts on Alleluia Aotearoa. Buy the pdf of AA for $NZ30, which is almost nothing, here.

This is an ecumenical hymn and a stirring call for unity.

The text is at Hope Publishing, where they set it to Song 13 by Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625).

I also found this setting for sale with music by Ron Klusmeier called PICTON. Here the second half of each stanza is repeated. My backing is more approximate than usual even for me.

Alleluia Aotearoa sets it to SHIRLEY by Jillian Bray.

Everyone wants to set Murray’s texts.

We were due to play for the Vigil here in Tasmania this Saturday night, but I caught Covid didn’t I, so I’m very prepared for next year, and others will kindly take over. My sister suggested I celebrate Orthodox Christmas when I recover.

We were going to use carols before mass and during mass around our usual mass setting (Taylor’s St Francis) so nothing special, except I love singing the Christmas Psalm and it would have been nice to introduce Farrell’s joyous song down here.

If any correspondents wish to add their selections please do, remembering that it is a good resource for our future selves.

Merry Christmas all.