Read Kate’s latest for The Tablet – Choosing Hymns for Special Occasions
This is the time of year for several special services. First Communions, Confirmations, Mothers’ Day, Lady Day all seem to be in spring or early summer, and we aren’t even into the wedding season yet, especially with the weather we’ve been having recently. Most people expect music at a celebratory service of whatever nature in church, and quite right too. Music brings people together, it wakes them up and calms them down, it can be a source of great comfort and solidarity. It is a prayer in itself; it gives a sense of community that is hard to beat (and that’s why people sing at rugby matches). It is powerful, but this power can also work negatively; people can be bored or irritated by music beyond what seems reasonable (imagine being stuck in a lift, or the dreaded holding on for a line to a doctor’s surgery)…
I’ve written about Lent Gospel Acclamations before, those little tags we use during Lent to replace the Alleluias before the Gospel. I feel prophetic, because the main message of my first blog about them was about how they always manage to creep round and bite you when you aren’t looking, and here we go again.
with Lent Gospel Acclamations, nowhere is safe
I have spent a lot of time on them over the last several years, trying to make sure we have all the versions and that the words are correct. They cause an astonishing amount of trouble for something so short and repetitive, and this is why I had to deal with the topic more than once. Here’s the back catalogue : a general introduction and attempt at explanation here and the update for when I realised there was more stuff that I hadn’t covered there.
…but this year it’s going to be different
This year (since Advent 2024) we have the New Lectionary, and all the previous work no longer fits the changed words. So far this only affects England and Wales, so all the other versions are still valid. The UK ones simply no longer correspond with what people have in their new Missals and Mass books, and this is no good if we’re priding ourselves on being word-perfect with the Lectionary. The changes are often quite minor, and they are often not an improvement, but they regularly alter the rhythm and stresses of the words of the Gospel verses. The big consolation, however, is that these are not part of the US copyright on the psalms, so we are allowed to share our music for them with anyone else who wants to be able to sing them (as we are encouraged to do by the rubric, but you’d never guess it from the chosen texts themselves).
Volmar the Vebmeister and I trying to subdue a Lent Gospel Acclamation
One feature of the New Lectionary is that it no longer seems to have alternative verses for the Lent Gospel Acclamations/Alleluia verses. I suspect this is a question of space, because the new translation is much longer and wordier than the old version, but it does mean that I have just had enough time to do a full set of the Lent Gospel Acclamations for Year C as Lent begins.
Shape and structure
The Lent Gospel Acclamations are made up of two parts, the top-and- tail (the bit that would be Alleluia on a non-Lent Sunday), and the Gospel verse. This has not changed. However, where we had four possible options before, for the top-and-tail, we now have eight. I haven’t yet had time to set all of them, so I’ve simply done the ones that turn up week-by-week in the Missal for this Lent, Year C. I have been careful to keep them all in the same key, though, and they are modular, so if you want your choir or congregation to stick with just one, it’s perfectly easy to keep to the same top-and-tail and just drop in the different verses each week. If you need an easily printed pdf of a changed version, just email me (singenofbingen@gmail.com) and I can send it to you, thanks to my brilliant music software (thank you, Musescore) and the equally brilliant son who found it for me (thank you, sweetie).
Lent Gospel Acclamations refusing to come quietly
We’re still trying to work out how to be able to post the new versions of the psalms which we are all having to cope with, but here at least is the list of the Lent Gospel Acclamations for the next few weeks. We will add as we get more done, but hope that at least these will help. Have a happy Lent and keep singing.
