Voices As One is the site for WLP’s contemporary area of liturgical music. They have several volumes of sheet music published in this area and excellent song writers that I haven’t been looking at, since I’ve been going through OCP’s spiritandsong collections. A few WLP songs were picked up for the As One Voice Collections in Australia, but in general they have very little penetration into the Australian market. As far as American music is concerned, which is widely used here, GIA and OCP have far more influence in Australia than WLP. I have used some of their material in the past when I was looking for a specific song to plug a liturgical hole and have always been impressed.
Despite being modern music it appears to be more liturgical rather than P&W, which is what I’m looking for, and has quite a variety of modern styles. It isn’t all Ed Bolduc either.
Their website will generally give a preview of the sheet music, a snippet of the song for listening purposes and some guidance as to it’s purpose and weeks of the liturgical year when it is particularly useful. I find this to be more consistent and helpful than OCP’s background material. They also provide a link to cheaply purchase for click and print in case you like the song and want the sheet music.
My plan is to blog my learning of the songs in the collection by my usual method of making a backing. Since WLP provide the text in the preview on their web site, I will just link to their page where you can find all their material and purchase the sheet music. I will also start linking to author pages again, as since the same songwriters were coming up over and over again it had become superfluous. With a new bunch of liturgical musicians this is no longer so.
I will otherwise assume you have the Voices As One Collections and, like me, you can’t just sit down and play the music, but need some help to learn the pieces.
All Will Be Well is an unusual chant by Steven C Warner based on a text by Julian of Norwich – one of the C14 English mystics who are all worth a read, including Richard Rolle and especially “The Cloud of Unknowing”. The words of consolation are suggested for Lent, Good Friday and healing masses and you can see why from the text. It has even inspired a blog that has the text as well. Apart from purchasing the music through WLP it is available elsewhere on the net (eg Sheet Music Plus – more expensive there) amazingly including a handbell version at GIA.
Remembering that chant and BIAB don’t go well together my backing is the usual fail but is just to help learning. The ostinato remains constant, but the verses alternate melody lines. The verses are meant for a cantor, but they are extinct where I live and there is nothing that would stretch an assembly here.