With the era of bound hymnals seemingly behind us, the task of singing a new song relies on finding things online and attending workshops like the upcoming APMN conference.
Unless you are from St Patrick’s in the Broken Bay diocese, where she runs the children’s choir it is possible you haven’t heard of Patricia Smith. I have blogged several of her songs and she is definitely worth knowing about. In Australia the most functional part of the Catholic Church is the school system, and so a lot of talent starts there and spreads to the parish.
This is a song for Eucharist expressed simply so that it suitable for all ages. The tune has the feel of “Come Saturday Morning” in the refrain, but is a sight more joyful.
The sheet music can be purchased at Willow where there are sample pages of the sheet music but no music to hear.
My backing will give you some idea I hope:
Refrain
Come to the banquet of love, and rejoice in the goodness of God.
Come, enter the house of our God, singing praise.
Come to the banquet of love.
1 In this communion of love one in heart
we give thanks to our God for his gifts, the gifts of his love.
2 Trusting our needs and our sorrows to go seeking shelter and peace
we have come to ask and receive.
3 Sharing our hopes and dreams with our God who delights in his people,
we come, the people of God.
4 Bringing our past and our present before One
whose mercy extends through all time
we trust in God’s love.
© 2020 P A Smith, Published by Willow Publishing
I’ve made a comment along these lines before, but I do not understand why Australian Catholics are so reluctant to use YouTube. It is free and straight-forward to upload as many videos as you want. The vast majority of existing YouTube liturgical music videos involve a fixed phone camera focussing on a keyboardist and singers, something not requiring great production skills. It is actually better if not overproduced anyway, because it gives a typical suburban volunteer player more confidence that they might be able to emulate what’s on the video. Many hours will have gone into composing and typesetting songs, so why not spend a little more time promoting them and providing a template of the intended way they should be played and sung for people who might use them.
And following on from this, if either Willow or someone else, perhaps APNM or an enthusiastic volunteer who loves contemporary liturgical music (since Willow can’t be making much money) could provide a central collection point on YouTube to set up and organize a channel, it would make it even easier for users to find new material. Music leaders could subscribe to a single channel and would know when new songs are added.
It would be very useful, Chris. Perhaps we are just more likely to hide our lights under a bushel than American parish musicians.
Geoff