Advent/Christmas choral plans at “Our Lady of Anonymity”

Proulx “Missa Emmanuel”
Advent 1: Byrd “Lord, Make Me to Know Thy Ways”
Advent 2: Victoria “Conditor alme siderum”
Advent 3: Howells “O, Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem” (from Ps. 122)
Advent lessons & carols: above 3 anthems plus all 7 O antiphons
Advent 4: Anerio “Ave maris stella”

Christmas midnight choral preludes (interspersed with the hymns):
Dawson “Mary Had a Baby”
Biery (arr.) “O Holy Night”
my own “Personent hodie”

Proulx “Gloria for Christmastime”
Chepponis “Festival Alleluia”
Christmas midnight: Hassler “Lætentur cœli” (from Ps. 96)
Epiphany: Fallan-Tidings “Out of the Orient Crystal Skies”
Baptism of the Lord: proper offertory

The Victoria will be a stretch for us. We are going to “cheat” a bit and sing the 6th verse with the same music as the 2nd. Since I’m giving verse 4 to soloists, that will let us do the piece with only one verse to learn - which, for some of my singers, will already be more than enough!

As I am looking over these plans, I am hoping I did not fall into my all-too-typical problem of overextending my singers musically. Howells will take a while to learn just because of how much music there is. Hassler - we’ll see. Anerio won’t be a problem.

What is problematic is that a lot of this is dependent on having those 1 or 2 “section leaders” there. Our rehearsal this past Thursday was pretty much a downer because we were missing most of our best readers in the tenor and bass sections. Alas, the Josquin “Tu pauperum” had to be dropped - again, not a difficult piece....I guess the Latin was a problem. (Heck, even the choir in my last parish pulled off the Josquin, though not without quite a bit of work.)

UPDATE: I’m dropping Hassler in favor of Halsey “Verbum caro” from SJMP. As I looked through the Hassler, a new awareness of “what the &^(* was I thinking?!?!” came to me; Halsey is still a cool piece and much more accessible to my group.