Church Music

Gen Bryant‘s Mass For Youth, in the sheet music I purchased, ($A9.95 at Willow) does not have a Gloria. Maybe the masses she intends this for rarely use a sung Gloria, maybe she isn’t happy with hers yet, who knows.

As a great impertinence and completely unsolicited, I wrote one for it. Of course, if Gen asks me to bin this I will.

I used the form of her second memorial acclamation – OK I am in 3/4 rather than 6/8 – using her chords and notes to start off and then added one musical phrase of my own and with repetition could fill out the Gloria. Having nicked most of the ideas I claim no copyright on this at all and I did it as an exercise, about which more later.

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to people of good will.
We praise you, we bless you,
we adore you, we glorify you.
We give you thanks for your great glory,
Lord God, heavenly King,
O God, almighty Father.
Lord Jesus Christ, only Begotten Son,
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
You take away the sins of the world
have mercy on us;
You take away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer;
You are seated at the right hand of the Father:
have mercy on us.
For you alone are the Holy One,
You alone are the Lord,
You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ,
With the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father.
Amen.

I occasionally write songs or hymns. I suspect a lot of parish musicians do likewise. When I was looking at Gen Bryant’s music to write the melody of the Gloria, it came very easily, having set words and the restrictions I gave myself. Years ago a lyric writer in the US sent me a couple of lyrics and I found it easier to set them than write something myself. I suspect, therefore, that I would work best as a collaborator, and it is interesting the companies like OCP lock up their songwriters together to get their committee songs.

Monica O’Brien and the Willow team are having a small song writing get together soon, and my hope for it is that we can establish a network for those who want to, to collaborate on our song writing. Except for a very few hardworking professionals, no-one is going to make any money out of this game, so I don’t think there is any great drama or risk in most of us doing this. Looking at Erwin Cabucos’s work recently reinforced my belief that our new song will come from the amateurs in the parish. I will be dead before anything useful comes from the hierarchy and we can only count on the schools for so much.

I’m going to put up some songs I have written of variable quality and age. I will post demos of me trying to sing the songs – fair warning, I have a poor voice. A lot of my songs have obvious flaws, but maybe someone else is best to fillet anything useful. I wrote hundreds of terrible songs when I was young for the two or three I still think are alright some forty something years later, so I doubt many of these songs are up to much.

Conversely, if anyone has a song fragment that they have lying around that they would like to bat around, do let me know.

For her litany for the Agnes Dei in her Mass For Youth, Gen Bryant uses the melodic theme from her Sanctus with a slower tempo in keeping with the liturgical moment. She also blends in lines from the Kyrie, which I thought unusual, but a little research has let me know that many litanies over the years have incorporated lines from the Kyrie so she is farming our traditions creatively.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

(Kyrie Eleison)

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

(Christe eleison)

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

I’m looking at Gen Bryant‘s Mass For Youth, which is most singable and worthy of our attention. It would be nice if it became the default school mass setting in Australia.

The Amen does not seem to relate to the other parts of the mass, but there is certainly enough congruity between the other elements of the setting already.

Amen x3

Gen Bryant goes back to 4/4 for Mem Acc 3 and I was thinking it would be much the same as Mem Acc 1, but no – she has inserted some melodic invention to differentiate the two acclamations.

The sheet music for the whole mass is $A9.95 at Willow.

Save us, Saviour of the world,

For by your Cross and Resurrection

You have set us free.

From the Gen Bryant‘s Mass For Youth, Mem Acc 2.

This is a change up in 6/8 time that nonetheless ends in with similar melody to the other acclamations, but over different chords to Mem Acc 1.

When we eat this bread and drink this cup,

We proclaim your death, O Lord,

Until you come again.

Continuing looking at Gen Bryant‘s Mass For Youth, we have the Mem Acc 1. As noted yesterday, it carries forward the melodic themes of the Sanctus.

We proclaim your Death, O Lord,
and profess your Resurrection,
until you come again.

Gen Bryant‘s Sanctus from her Mass For Youth has matching melodic motifs with the Memorial Acclamations 1 and 3 and the Agnes Dei, which helps greatly from a learning perspective. There is mild syncopation and nice triplets to make things interesting.

Holy, Holy, Holy
Lord God of hosts.​
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Sam found this in a live stream:

Gen Bryant‘s Gospel Acclamation, in her Mass For Youth, uses the generically useful response:

Speak, O Lord your servant is listening, you have the words of everlasting life.

I’ve been thinking that this will have a primary use for school masses and so you won’t necessarily be looking for a response for a particular Sunday.

If there are any early adopters out there using this mass, it would be great to see then on YouTube.

She has arranged the piece for choir and cantor with them trading alleluias after the verse.

The sheet music for the mass can be purchased at Willow for $A9.95.

Sing along to learn the song.

Alleluia x4

Speak, O Lord your servant is listening, you have the words of everlasting life.

Alleluia (Alleluia) x3

Alleluia.

I haven’t reviewed a Mass setting in a long time after the rush of new settings when the words were made worse over a decade ago.

I note Gen Bryant‘s Mass For Youth is topping the sales at Willow, and although I don’t remotely qualify as “youth” I thought for $A10 for downloadable sheet music at Willow, you can’t go wrong, so I’d have a look.

There are also snippets of her singing part of the parts there, but I can find nothing else on the web to hear how she wants them played.

It appears she has been working on this since 2007 looking at the copyright information. Her Kyrie is most singable, which is always a good start.

My backing might be a touch slow, but sing along to see if you could use her mass.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy, Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

This is one for APMN members who have received the latest newsletter that has the lyrics and a link to sheet music for Beth Doherty‘s song, “Garden / Laudato Si”, which will be useful in the Season of Creation.

Since I can’t see where to access this outside of the link in the newsletter, I’ll let you look at the lyrics there and access the sheet music if you are a member of the APMN.

The YouTube clip has been taken down for some reason, so I don’t know what style she had in mind. Even though the sheet music is in the very unfriendly key of C#, I still made a backing.