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.
Each year I rummage through my (large and still growing) collection of carol books, to check everything will be ready in time, and I get distracted by the Oxford Book of Carols‘ insistence on definitions and distinctions, as it goes into detail which most people presumably just skip over; but it is all actually fascinating stuff, and written by great men (then) working at the coalface. Section 2,page xv, starts with a truth we can all acknowledge : ‘The selection of carols is not so easy a task as perhaps might be imagined’. I think every Church musician would say a heartfelt Amen to that.
singing with warmth and colour
Is it a carol? No, it’s a hymn
Even defining a carol is difficult. Some people suggest that it must be a song also for dancing; it must be of a certain age; it must be popular rather than literary; it must have definite roots of place, and so on. The problem is that everyone can think of exceptions to every rule. Much ink has been spilt over the distinction between carols and hymns, but I’m not sure that it is a useful distinction (if it ever was), especially now when most parishes have only one music book which has to cover everything, and all the parish hymn books I can think of have had carols in for years.
How many carols can dance on the head of a pin?
Same legend, different tree; this is a palm tree, pretending to be the cherry tree in The Cherry Tree carol
We are blessed with a large number of carols (and hymns) in the English-speaking church, and I find the problem every year is getting as many as possible into the festive season. You can’t sing carols before the end of Advent, and you are unlikely to sing them beyond Candlemas; so that’s not so many Sundays when you can plan to sing them, though there are also some extra feastdays during this period (St. Stephen, and Mary the Mother of God, among others). You need to include particular favourites and requests (where possible) and cover as many groups of people as you can (small children who only know Away in a Manger, older people who feel cheated if you don’t include Adeste fideles, choir members who love singing Ding dong merrily, and my husband who will settle for either Good King Wenceslas or It came upon the midnight clear, but will be very upset if we don’t sing at least one of them).
Most people will come to only one of the Christmas Masses (up to four options, in many parishes), and they will all want to hear or preferably sing their favourite carols. But you need a bit of variety for the choir, and as I said, there is a lot of wonderful material. Squaring that circle is difficult.
Welcome, Yule, but not here, or just at the moment
singing and banqueting at the same time
There’s a large group of carols which I don’t think you can sing in church, and those are the ones which stress the Yule factor rather than anything religious. This can be diplomatically difficult, because some people will disagree with your classification. We wish you a merry Christmas is a good example, and various Wassail carols; The boar’s head in hand bring I starts like one of these, but has holy words later, and the same goes for I saw three ships, or Past three o’clock. That shows how tricky it can be, and I suspect that carol ‘services’ were invented partly to have the possibility of blurring the line. These are great carols for carol singing, it’s just difficult to fit them properly into one of the Christmas Masses. But every family Christmas needs a sing-song, partly for its nuisance factor as well for the sake of tradition; and of course, if you go out carol singing, you sing anything that will bring the money in, and the Yule carols are great for that.
Carols for other times of year
I’m not including in this discussion any of the ‘carols’ for different times of the year, like the Easter carols, the May carols, and carols from other parts of the Bible narratives (Job, Jacob, the Passion narratives, parables). I did say it was only a ‘partial’ guide. I’m thinking about Christmas carols as part of the liturgy over the Christmas season, even though many of the others are great carols; and even here, there is an exception, because many people love the Coventry carol (Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child) and would be sad not to include it, but the massacre of the innocents must be some time after the birth of Jesus, or Herod would not have included all babies under two.
angel choirs enabling a singalong
Sweet singing in the quire
Our church, like many others, has a half-hour of carols before Midnight Mass starts. We try to keep the programme varied, but we also keep to the holy carols rather than the secular, just because it feels appropriate in church. And it’s before Midnight Mass, even if not by much, so we are still careful not to sing the most intensely triumphant ones. It helps to imagine the running order as telling a story, so we start gently with Once in Royal. That ‘Once’ is a clear sign that the story starts here, and you never need to apologise for old favourites at Christmas. We use Come, come, come to the manger for the procession to the crib, and we sing Adeste fideles as the first hymn of the Mass proper. There is plenty of room for others. We keep the gentle ones for Communion (Silent Night on Christmas night, Away in a Manger on Christmas Day, when there are more children). Hark the Herald is always our last hymn at the end of Mass, for several reasons. You have to have it because for many people it is a crucial element of Christmas, but the words are a celebration of what has just happened, rather than setting the scene like (say) O little town of Bethlehem. From a practical choir point of view, Hark the Herald is loud and high, even higher with the descant, and your sopranos will be grateful if that’s the last thing they have to sing (until the next day, at least).
Even more choices
You have to have some of the old carols, but for some people that means Victorian, whereas others want mediaeval. If you want something new to your choir and congregation, there are lovely Czech and Polish carols, as well as the more familiar French and German ones. You can adapt the wedding outfit couplet to carols too: something old, something new, something borrowed and instead of ‘blue’, I’d go for ‘snew’, because there are lots of great carols with snow in : In the bleak midwinter, See amid the winter’s snow, Good King Wenceslas, and add your own. Myself, I’m very partial to the macaronic German carols, where there are Latin lines mixed into the words : In dulci jubilo, Quem pastores, Unto us a boy is born, Angelus ad virginem, but I think this is because they have such wonderful tunes. The French gave us the carols with the long Gloria in the chorus, which everyone remembers from school (Angels we have heard in heaven, Ding dong merrily).
carols are for dancing as well as singing
Get everyone singing
There are so many to choose from. Personally I’m not keen on the more operatic ones designed for soloists (O holy night) or an accomplished choir (Carol of the Bells, sorry, dear Ukrainians), or arranged so that the congregation can’t join in (several of the versions in Carols for Choirs). For many people, Christmas is the one time they come to church and know the tunes, and even some of the words, and I think we should lean into this at our Christmas Masses. Sing something trickier or more unfamiliar at Communion, while people are away from the pews, but give them lots of chances to feel part of a singing congregation, because that is so special at Christmas.
Don’t forget David
David , to whom we owe so much
And sing the psalm, because the psalms for the Christmas season are exciting and jubilant, and should be sung. You will find suggested tunes for the Psalms and the Alleluias on our website and you can read more about my Christmas music in general if you would like. From lullabies to jolly celebrations, songs are one of the best ways to join in the Christmas festivities. And even if you don’t feel happy when you start, with so much still to do, after a carol or two, you will indeed feel merry like Christmas.
