4th Sunday of Lent (Year A, 2011)

Sunday, 3 April 2011

 

Entrance	Your hands, O Lord, in days of old
Kyrie	Mass XVII
Psalm	His goodness shall follow me (Chris O’Hara)
Gospel Acclamation	Praise to you, O Christ (James Walsh)
Preparation of the Gifts	My spirit longs for thee (John Dowland, 1563-1626)
Sanctus, Acclamation, Amen	Mass XVII
Agnus Dei	Mass XVII & Missa O Quam Gloriosum (T.L. de Victoria, 1548-1611)
Communion	Lord, your love has drawn us near (Stephen Dean)
Recessional	Be thou my vision

 

Today’s Gospel story of the healing of the man born blind prompted a few of our musical selections. Our opening hymn, with the lines

And then your touch brought life and health,
gave speech and strength and sight

was sung to the tune Coe Fen, and we had vision in a wider sense in our recessional hymn. The choir sang My spirit longs for thee, fitting the words of John Byrom (1692-1763) to a song by John Dowland. These words touched more obliquely on sight:

Yet has my heart no rest,
Unless it come from Thee.
Unless it come from Thee,
In vain I look around;
In all that I can see,
No rest is to be found.

For our responsorial psalm we took Chris O’Hara’s adaptation of Ps 22(23), hauntingly set to the Irish folk song She moved through the fair. We sang it unaccompanied, the cantor’s verses (beautifully executed by Rachel O’Farrell) alternating with the refrain in four part harmony, though with the people joining in too.

Plainchant and Victoria too; our trademark mix, you could say.