This Saturday is the 1st Sunday of Advent and the beginning of Liturgical Year A.
The music for Advent has been sent to the Office for approval. If you'd be interested in cantoring one of the Psalms, let me know. Also, please note the addition of one song for the Wreath Blessing this Saturday (this wasn't included in the email circulated yesterday). I still need to sort out the Christmas program, and will get that sent out in the next week or so.
We switch to Mass of Joy & Peace this week. If you haven't already, please take a few minutes to look this over. We won't be using the Penitential Rite this week, but it will be on the board for next week, 12/3.
We'll also start using Gather, Third Edition this week. All the materials are now available in the choir section/cabinet. There's quite a bit of crossover with the old book, and I'll list both page numbers for a while until we're all situated. Not sure how this will be handled on the website yet; stay tuned...
I'm told that a young person who plays bass expressed interest in joining us; he was given my contact info, but we haven't heard anything from him yet. If you see/hear anything on this, please let me know.
As previously noted, we'll be using 'God of All People', as our Offertory song for Advent. I'm thinking this will be done with full instruments and at a faster tempo than the recording below. We may need to repeat verses/add an instrumental verse for time.
'He Came Down' isn't really written for guitar; piano would work, but I don't think it would add much to the song. With that being said, I'd like to have vocals and percussion only on this tune. It's fairly short, but each verse could be repeated twice, back-to-back, and additional verses could be made up as needed (we would only need to swap out a single word). The biggest thing to watch for is the triplets -- these definitely need to be together, or else this piece will fall apart pretty quickly.
Finally, a quick update on Christmas Eve. First, it appears that instrument-wise, Jonathan, Joe and Barry are available, but Jim, Maggie and Eva will be out. We haven't been down this many instrumentalists for a major Liturgy in quite a while, so the goal will be to keep the program simple and focus more on vocals than instruments. I probably won't make any major changes to the program, with the exception of preludes. We'll likely end up rehearsing songs piecemeal in the coming weeks and then getting together for a dress rehearsal the week of Christmas. More on this later.
UPDATE: 11/22: Jim let us know that there's been a change in plans and he's available for Christmas Eve after all.
UPDATE: 11/23: In case anyone was planning to attend the Thanksgiving Mass this evening, Father Charlie isn't feeling well, so it's been canceled.
Eva is out this week.
If I don't see you before Thursday, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!
Gathering:
SS #121 – In the Day of the Lord (vs 1-3)
Materials (audio) (sheet music)
Advent Wreath Blessing:
GC #318 / GC3 #409 - People, Look East
Materials (audio)
Response:
SS #084 – Ps 122 – I Rejoiced
Materials (audio) (sheet music)
Gospel Acclamation:
Mass of Joy & Peace
Offertory:
GC #331 / GC3 #412 – God of All People
Materials (audio) (sheet music)
Holy, Holy, Holy:
Mass of Joy & Peace
Eucharistic Acclamation:
Mass of Joy & Peace
Eucharistic Doxology:
Mass of Joy & Peace
Lamb of God:
Mass of Joy & Peace
Communion:
GC #328 / GC3 #415 – My Soul in Stillness Waits
Materials (audio) (sheet music)
Closing:
GC #370 / GC3 #429 – He Came Down
Materials (audio) (sheet music)
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