Music for Sunday 6 February

Well, the term break is officially over, as of today.  I'm taking the new music list off to the printers this morning, and then the first choir rehearsal for the year will eat up the late afternoon and early evening.

It's always fun doing the music list for the early part of the year.  I always make a point of including the alternative titles for various Sundays -- thus, the fourth Sunday in Lent carries the subtitle 'laetare,' for example.  These things help to make us more aware of the underlying rhythm of the liturgy, something which it is hard to convey to young people whose experience is conditioned by almost anything other than stability.  Calling a Sunday by a Latin name also helps to remind us that we worship in communion with those who have gone before, and that the liturgy itself isn't necessarily ours to shape as we will.  And, of course, there's a certain amount of fun in seeing the frisson that goes through unwitting choristers when they stumble on the 'gesima' Sundays ("...it says sexagesima!").  I'll see if I remember to post photos of various choral eyebrows ascending...

Readings for this week are linked here, and the psalm setting is here.  The setting will be Philip Mathias (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: God of freedom, God of justice [657, tune 497]
Sequence: O day of God, draw near [616, tune 490]
Offertory: O changeless Christ, for ever new [254]
Communion: Praise and thanksgiving, Father, we offer [627]