I’m always wondering what music other pastoral musicians are using for various seasons of the year. We are going into the fifth weekend of Lent and I am happy to say that I’ve had my choir practicing the music for Triduum for over a month. For me, that is a pretty big deal. I just spoke to a choir director from another parish and she is still trying to figure out what bi-lingual music she will be doing for The Three Days. I suggested to her that she find some music that her choir already knows!

I could take a whole blog post to talk about each musical selection we are doing, but I don’t have the time—so I’ll be brief and highlight a few selections.

The Gathering Hymn, Holy God was composed by the devil himself, Marty Haugen. It is a very moving piece of music that has sort of a Celtic feel to it with a beautiful drone and the beginning and throughout most of the piece. The music builds in intensity towards the end and decrescendos back down during the last few bars…I think it’s a beautiful hymn for Lent.

The Kyrie and all of the mass parts were composed by myself. I named the mass, “Mass of the Holy Land” because the tune was inspired by a very old Jewish chant, whose name I unfortunately can’t recall at the moment. By the way—the little codes I use in the spreadsheet are to help me keep track of the instrumental parts that are available to me—Cv for cello and Fl for flute. The red letters mean I wrote the instrumental part and the blue abbreviations mean the parts were provided by the publisher.

The song for Preparation of Gifts is Lord, Jesus Christ by Carol Browning. It was composed in the style of a Taize chant (Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of the Loving God. Have mercy on me a sinner, have mercy) and is based on Psalm 51. It is a wonderful piece for Lent. We’re also using it for our reconciliation service next week.

The communion song is Learn to Live the Story, again by Marty Haugen and the Sending Forth song which I spoke of in my last blog post is Journey For Home by Ed Buldoc.