I’m blogging Spirit and Song Vol 1 and have got to the section called Prayer and Praise songs. That means that these songs are less likely to have a liturgical function and are more likely to be solo vehicles. If I skip a song that means I’ve already blogged it in the past.
Tom Booth‘s “Cry the Gospel” is a fine P&W song whose extreme syncopation in the refrain makes an assembly’s task difficult. A good indicator for me is that if I am entering an awful lot of 16th notes for the melody in BIAB, it is probably a song for solo voice. That said, it has a call and response refrain and so is obviously intended to be sung with a least a choir. You can hear his original, rather restrained, version here.
The text is at spiritandsong. The sheet music can be purchased for download at OCP.
This is a video of Tom Booth performing with a choir in a mass setting, where it looks a performance with the camera angle revealing no obvious participation from the assembly.
In a different setting outside of a mass, the song comes into its own as Booth teaches as he goes and gets the call and response going: