Lent 3--Year A

Lent 3--Year A

Processional: Oculi (chant)

Kyrie: chant--my arrangement

Psalm: Chabanel

GA: Proulx w/choral verse

Offertory: Iustitiae--Rossini (male quartet)

Communio: Qui biberit (chant)
Like as the Hart (Howells)


The Introit for this week is a long one. We axed the verse and the repetition of the antiphon since the priest was raring to go by the end of the first antiphon. My men (who are singing these for Lent) are discovering that the Introit is definitely more of a challenge than the Communio.

This is one of the rare weeks that we got to do all the processional Propers. The Iustitiae is a homophonic arrangement of the Offertory set for TTBB. I'm so torn about some of this music written around let's say 50-70 years ago. It's not Palestrina by any means, but it's turning into a guilty pleasure. This particular motet has some good part-writing and an extended harmonic vocabulary. I know, I know, I'm supposed to shun this stuff . . .

We used the easier melody for the Communio. The choir sang it well though we cut it somewhat short to fit in the Howells. Like as is one of my favorites; truly a wonderful setting of the text. It's not hard, but I always underestimate the time it takes to really do justice to the setting. I had to axe the descant since I only had one soprano on Wednesday (had 3 on Sunday for the actual performance). The only drawback to the piece is that the altos are twiddling their thumbs most of the time. Despite a little "hairiness" in the pre-Mass rehearsal, it really came off well for Mass.