Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all!

Here is a selection of rep from our parish’s Christmas Masses. All Masses used the midnight readings (plegh, but not my call).

All Masses did:
Entrance: O Come, All Ye Faithful
Gloria: Proulx “Gloria for Christmastime”
resp. psalm: Guimont (midnight - wonderful refrain!)
Alleluia: Chepponis “Festival Alleluia”
Canon acclamations: Mass of Light (I know. But, the parish knows it.)
Agnus: Mass of Remembrance (another example of non-offensive Haugen)
Communion: my setting of the midnight Communion antiphon/psalm
Haugen Ps. 98 (see note above for Mass of Light)
Moore “Taste and See” (ditto)
Thanksgiving: Silent Night
Recessional: Joy to the World

The vigil Mass is usually the “contemporary” Mass. Yes, yes, I know, but I have felt that I am much more likely to be able to introduce chant etc. if I show myself to be amenable to things like drums, bass, etc. I actually played bass, with parishioners on piano, guitar, and drums. The singers were a small group of about 7, and there wasn’t much time for teaching anything very interesting vocally. What we did do, amidst the selection of carols before Mass:

Michael Card “Immanuel” (music not too bad, but I’m not up on the text)
O Holy Night, easy arrangement
Wayne Watson “Child of Bethlehem” (not bad, for being pop)


The midnight Mass had the parish choir (plus a few seasonal singers and new recruits!), handbells, timpani, trumpets, flutes, and clarinet. The choir did:

Dawson “Mary Had a Baby”
Anerio “Ave maris stella” (alternatim w/ chant)
my own arrangement of “Personent hodie” (to use the instruments)
an easy (choral) “O Holy Night” arrangement


The Dawson is quite a bit harder than I thought. It just does not seem to teach easily .... which I now think is because of all the note-finding it requires. My group did ok with it (other than, alas, the opening soprano bars). Anerio turned out well - definitely a piece to keep in mind, since it’s only about 20 bars of polyphony and a fairly easy (short) chant tune.

Much of this required arranging, esp. writing timpani parts. The end results, though, were well worth it!


PT, Gavin - I am curious what, given your antipathy toward Missa Emmanuel etc., you think of the Proulx Christmastime Gloria - one asset that occurred to me is that Catholics who don’t come to Mass regularly can sing it.