The verse words : Gospel Acclamations Part 2

The Alleluia comes first, but the words are the message

Everyone refers to the ‘the Alleluia’, because that is the bit that doesn’t change, that repeats every week (except during Lent).  It is the frame to a verse from the Gospels (usually), and this verse changes (almost) every week, to highlight something about the coming Gospel. The words of the Gospel verse are very important.  They are the filling in the Alleluia sandwich.  You can make sandwiches out of several different sorts of bread, but most people are most interested in what is between the slices.

Ornate wooden seesaw
Alleluias at both ends, but the fulcrum is the verse, a container for the meaning
Lots of different Alleluia verses

Those various parenthetical hedges leave quite a lot of leeway for alteration, but one of the startling things about the Alleluia verse for me is how much variation there is between the different national Lectionaries.  Some differences are predictable : some Lectionaries are more concerned to be inclusive than others. Some prefer to keep the words as they appear in the text, whereas others are relaxed about paraphrasing them.  Sometimes a bit of context or narrative framing is added (‘says the Lord’, for example).  Sometimes you feel that the person drafting the Gospel verse has remembered that it is supposed to be sung,  but sometimes definitely not.  Sometimes a natural rhythm emerges if I read the words over; sometimes I find it difficult to create any rhythm at all, when it is obvious that if they had just left out a word, or used one with two syllables instead of four or one, it would have worked better.

Balancing the words and the Alleluia
Verse words need to balance
A sense of balance is essential in any culture at any time

Over time I have discovered that the number of bars is very important, even if I don’t know enough about music theory or maths to understand precisely why.  It (nearly always; there are exceptions to everything!) has to be an even number, and usually a multiple of four (though sometimes six is OK).  The Alleluia is usually four bars, so I think this is why, but there seems to be a deeply rooted sense of balance at work here.  If I go back and find a verse that doesn’t follow this rule, it’s usually because I’ve made a mistake, and I can hear where I ought to have held a note on for longer, for example.  The problem arises where the words are not conducive to a sense of balance!

Children playing on parallel bars
a well-developed sense of balance
One set of Alleluia words

Here are the words for a recent Sunday (10 OTB) as an example.

US :  Now the ruler of this world will be driven out, says the Lord;                 and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.

UK :   Now the prince of this world is to be overthrown,                                             says the Lord.                                                                                                                         And when I am lifted up from the earth,                                                                            I shall draw all men to myself.

OZ  :  The prince of this world will now be cast out,                                               and when I am lifted up from the earth,                                                                           I will draw all to myself, says the Lord.

CAN :  Now the ruler of this world will be driven out,                                             and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.

This is how they are set out, and the line division and the punctuation is supposed to be reflected in the musical setting.  Admittedly, this is one of the Lord’s more gnomic utterances, so it’s important not to rush it, because it is already slightly difficult to grasp on first hearing (and you always have to think about the people who don’t have the written text in front of them, probably the majority now and certainly so in the past).

choir with one large score
Not everyone can see the words
Factors that matter when setting words

Three of these start with a stressed syllable (‘now’), one with an unstressed one.  That’s very important, as it is the interface between the congregation singing and the cantor (or choir) picking up.  You don’t want the congregation to feel that they have done something wrong, because that destroys their confidence and then they won’t come in next time, so you have to be careful not to clip the Alleluia or leap in too fast; but an unstressed syllable cannot start a bar.

The OZ version here immediately suggests a 3/4 rhythm, but it gets weaker as it progresses.  The others don’t have much rhythm at all; and three of the versions have an interrupting ‘says the Lord’, which you have to decide what to do with.  The words offer a couple of pointers to what the tune might do (‘overthrown’, ‘lifted’, ‘draw’), but there’s not much in the way or suggestion.

I could give lots more examples, but every set of words has its points and difficulties.  St Paul is nearly always tricky, but so is St James. Old Testament (especially the Psalms, of course) and the words of Jesus himself tend to be more straightforward, but then you have to decide what to do with the says-the-Lords (nearly a bar on its own).   OZ often leaves that out, as CAN has done in the above example, which makes for a better flow, but can be slightly uncomfortable to sing in the first person!

Christ in glory ceiling mosaic
‘I’ am the light of the world?
The rhythm comes first

I tend to look for the rhythm first, then the tune, and then work out what Alleluia setting seems the  best fit.  When the words are as varied as this example, there tends to be variety in the Alleluias too.  I just checked back, and indeed, they are all different (Michael US, Step UK, Turner OZ and Clock CAN).  In addition, the UK Missal tends to offer an alternative set of words for the Alleluia every week, and  my US and CAN missals have a helpful page of possible alternative Alleluias (it’s quite hard to find, as it’s not listed anywhere in the Missal contents, so you just come across it by chance, and that is why I haven’t done a systematic set yet).

Getting the words across

The rhythm is crucial, because it helps to make sense of the words.  This is why I don’t find chant settings of the Alleluia verse helpful, because in my experience, if you have a text that is difficult, the cantor rests on the chant line rather than using it to bring out the sense; he or she just runs the line straight without using chant’s ability to frame the sinuous curves which support the meaning.  This is like when you listen to announcements on planes or at airports for example (or at the station in M Hulot’s Holiday),  when someone is reading out a translation without actually understanding it, sometimes without any intonation at all,  and it’s astonishingly hard to grasp what they are saying.  If you hear the Gospel being ceremonially intoned (sung mostly on one note), you will often hear the same effect.  The less important words, or even the whole inside of a sentence, is just sung in a sequence of equal quavers, and it is difficult to follow.  It’s certainly reverent; it can be beautiful; but it doen’t necessarily aid comprehension.

Making the tune relevant

Admittedly, there are still difficulties when you set the Gospel words as a tune.  Diction is crucial.  This is why my settings don’t often go very high or very low, because that makes enunciating the words (or spitting them out, as we singers say) more difficult, but at least the rhythm and the rests should help to make the sense clearer, and musically you can linger on words like forever or everlasting, to mirror the sense………and all this within four bars or so.   I enjoy trying different things here.  I put hammer blows in the music under ‘I will build my church’ and the different melody lines fall into step one after the other when the Lord talks about following, but most Alleluia verses tend to be abstract, and there’s very little space.

child being carried in a princess chair
Probably a Christmas Alleluia, as the two halves supporting the verse don’t exactly match

Back to the tiny piece of ivory then;  but if the Alleluia and the verse support each other and create a harmonious unit, then we are greeting the Gospel with ceremony and awareness.  We have stood up, we have taken some deep breaths, we are acting collectively.  We are ready for the Lord to speak to us.  To coin a phrase, from his mouth to our ear.

Jesus appearing to Job
Speak, Lord, your servant is listening

[You can also read this in Spanish]

©Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Keefe and Music for Mass, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 

 

 

 

Lent Gospel Acclamations, a User’s Guide

Putting the Alleluia on hold (for a little while)…..

From this Wednesday, you won’t hear the word Alleluia in church for the next six weeks or so. That is because it is the beginning of Lent,  and during Lent all the Alleluias, like the Gloria, are removed from the liturgy.

A beautiful place to keep the Alleluias during Lent
…and giving the job to the Lent Gospel Acclamation

Instead we have the Lent Gospel Acclamation, which has the exact same role. It heralds the Gospel. We sing (or say, but singing’s better) it before the (relevant) Gospel verse, and repeat it afterwards; then, completely focussed and wideawake (because of the injection of new oxygen caused by singing), we listen to the Gospel.  In some parishes, they repeat the Acclamation again after the Gospel, which means the congregation is singing it at least three times.

Lots of options

There are different forms of words for the Lent Gospel Acclamation, and they also differ in each country-group, so we end up with lots of them.  I’m not sure why there is so much variation, as they all replace the simple word ‘Alleluia’, and no-one seems to feel a need to vary that from week to week, but I just work with what I’m given.

Hunting the Bonnacore (mythical beast)
Volmar and I attempting to subdue the Lent Gospel Acclamation

We’ve now been doing this for a few years, and I have to admit that my heart and that of Volmar the Vebmaster both sink when we realise it’s Lent Gospel Acclamation time again.  This is because they are tricksy little things and it’s hard to get a good grip on them.  Somehow they always manage to get in behind you and bite you on the bottom, however hard you try to keep them in order.  This year, for example, I was reasonably sanguine about them after putting a lot of work and organisation in over the last two years.  Ash Wednesday looked all right…..and then my nice neat system fell at the first hurdle as I had to write a third one for Canada for First Sunday of Lent Year B, because the Missal used a different one.

Sheep tightly jammed into sheepfold
How many different Acclamations?
Lots and lots of options

The problem arises because each country-group Missal can choose any of the optional Lent Gospel Acclamations to go with any set Gospel verse, which offers a dizzying number of possibilities.  Most parishes don’t actually want to have a new Acclamation every week as well as the new Gospel verse.  So what I have done is take a default setting for every week, choosing the one that is used most often in the Lectionary, so that you can actually sing the same Acclamation every week if you want to;  and where the Acclamation in the Missal is one of the alternatives, I’ve set that as well (so you can stick with the words exactly as in the Missal if you prefer).  For all the country-groups except  the Canadians, the default setting is the first standard Lent Gospel Acclamation, but for Canada it is the fifth on the list.

Nun reading at lectern
Hooray for women cantors even if they can’t read the Gospel
The problems of labelling

I started out by giving them letters instead of numbers, but that turned out too confusing.  We have numbered them according to the order in the Missal, but it’s still not foolproof as the Sundays of Lent are themselves numbered, and the Years are designated by different letters, so both obvious markers could cause confusion.  I thought about Roman numerals, lower-case letters and different alphabets, but they all have drawbacks.  Volmar is deeply attached to Roman numerals (it’s all those occurrences of the letter ‘V’), so he uses it in his lists, but I get to put the titles on the music pages. Various useful typographical marks aren’t accepted as elements in filenames by the computer.  So the form we settled on is that the first number in any name is the marker for the top-and-tail, and later numbers refer to the Sunday of Lent. Thus Lent Gospel Acclamation 1 (US) 1 Lent A, for example.

America, Canada and Australia/New Zealand all use the same set of possible Lent Gospel Acclamations, but OZ and CAN do not use Nos. 3 and 6 in their Missals.  I thought about renumbering in consequence, but decided against it. The UK and Ireland have their own set.

In addition, the Saints’ days which fall in Lent have to use Lent Gospel Acclamations instead of Alleluias.  Since March is a busy month (St David, St Patrick and St Joseph among others), this is a whole further group.

Further possible complications

Sometimes I have to transpose the Acclamation down a tone, because the Gospel verse would otherwise feel uncomfortable for the Cantor;  I thought about doing a separate list of these as well, but decided it probably wasn’t worth it.  Most Acclamations are in G or F, and they are all 4/4;  this is to keep things as modular as possible, so if your congregation particularly likes one Acclamation, it’s easy to reuse it, even if it isn’t the one set in the Missal.  And I can easily transpose anything for you if you e-mail me (singenofbingen@gmail.com).

How does it work in practice?

When we post the music for the appropriate Sunday, this means that every week there is a setting of the Lent Gospel Acclamation with that week’s Gospel verse, and often two, because there is the default setting (usually Lent Gospel Acclamation 1) as well as whatever is written in the Missal.  It’s not as complicated on the ground as it sounds when you try to explain it.   On some Lent Sundays,  we have the same Gospel verse as a different Year, but a different top-and-tail, so it’s possible to end up with three options, but usually it’s only two; and of course, you only need one for any given Mass.   We are trying to keep this simple (I realise it may not sound like that!), and it’s easier in practice than it sounds.

Making them work

Like Alleluias, these are musical miniatures, but they do have a function, and they have to work.  To be successful, they must be clear, attract attention, encourage participation, stop people being distracted and give the words their full weight.  This is why everyone sings the top-and-tail, even if only the cantor sings the verse.  That’s quite a lot of work for four bars of music.

Teacher reading to class maybe studying Lent Gospel Acclamations?
Paying attention and enjoying it?

The Acclamations need to be a call, but not jubilant like the Alleluia, more of a formal introduction.  The format for both Alleluias and Lent Gospel Acclamations  reminds me of the old advice about speaking to a group : you need to tell people what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.  It is a deliberate framing device.  Some of the words are trickier than others; I have tried to be ceremonial without being musically pompous.  They don’t need to be slow, just comfortable talking speed for the verse.  Over the course of Lent, the Gospel verses start spare and become slightly more elaborate; I have tried to follow the same development.

Always trying to catch up

As evidence of the tricksiness of the Lent Gospel Acclamation, I have to mention that only this year did I discover that there are even two more available for the US and CAN Lectionaries.  These two don’t get set in the Missal for the Lent Sundays, so I don’t actually need them for this year; but in the interests of completeness, and giving you the full set of options  [and here they are], I will try to set them before next Lent season……and then I will find that there is still more to do, before I have got all the Lent Gospel Acclamations sorted out and musicked.  I wish you a happy, holy and musical Lent.

Mini-dragons attacking people like Lent Gospel Acclamations
Lent Gospel Acclamations refusing to lie down

© Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Keefe and Music for Mass, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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