Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Happy Holiday Father Stephen





With a grin as wide as the Forth Road Bridge, Father Stephen signed off before his holiday with a trenchant and uplifting sermon on the role of Catholic Christians in modern society. Significantly his sermon was shorter - the messages are either getting through or the thought of his holiday hideaway was too much to resist. Whatever the reason, we wish him a happy holiday and hope that he returns from his well deserved break feeling rested and uplifted. Our music liturgy this Sunday was enlightened by a welcome return of Jess' flute but the absence of any other woodwind instruments was in part due to forgetfullness on behalf of Choirboy minor (female) and the continued absence of Maz - where are you ?


Choirboy is still struggling with myspace (it is frankly not fit for purpose, but better than nothing). He now has three songs on the myspace site. Hopefully, he will be able to upload something that we are actually singing at the moment !

http://www.myspace.com/cornwallchoirboy

I cannot let this message go by without reference to last night's practice. If anyone has seen these: -

Please return them to Gil - he's been having some problems with his new fixative and suffered a mishap during vigorous rehearsals for next Sunday.

Entry: - My God accept my heart this day

Gloria: - Peruvian Gloria

Alleluia: - Plymouth Alleluia

Offertory: - Blessed be God

Holy Holy: - Gathering mass

Mem Accl: - Christ has died

Amen: - We lift our hearts

Lamb of God: -Newquay mass (ii)

Communion: - Song of a young prophet

Recessional Walk with me, O my Lord

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Music online - at last !


Those who have managed to sustain enough interest in this blog will have noted my unsuccessful attempts to post music on the web. I think I now have this sorted (in part) and will be uploading various pieces of music onto Choirboy's own myspace domain. Just click on the link and it will bring you to a virtual place where you can play some of Choirboy's music. The two mp3 (technical term) files at present on the site are:- Angel of God (with Choirboy minor) and When the Wind Blows - see earlier post for a discussion on eschatology.
Happy listening - let me know what you think.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Christian Unity ?


This 3 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time coincided with the time of the year when we have a week of prayer for Christian unity. We were fortunate to have Mr Philip Reece from Newquay URC preaching to us, while our own Deacon Brian was preaching at St Michael's, Newquay. Before mass Choirboy was accosted by Father Stephen in relation to comments made on these pages about the length of his sermons. Even Mrs Choirboy has had a go at poor Father Stephen. We shall see if this collective nagging has any effect - the clock will be ticking. Meanwhile, our music liturgy today included something from Westminster Hymnal (as requested by Bernard's mother) as well as Choirboys first memorial acclamation composition which was based on his Newquay mass setting.
Regular readers will have probably noticed that the link in last weeks post does not work very well. Choirboy spends many hours trying to fix IT issues both at home and at work - he will give this one some more time when he feels able !
Today we lacked a number of musicians to various committments: - mothering, rugby and we know not what. Hopefully, we will have our regulars back next week.
Entry: - Song of the body of Christ

Gloria: - Gloria !

Alleluia: - Plymouth Alleluia

Offertory: - In bread we bring You

Holy Holy: - Gathering mass

Mem Accl: - Christ has died

Amen: - We raise our hearts

Lamb of God: - Newquay mass (ii)

Communion: - Sweet Sacrament divine

Recessional: - Go tell everyone

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Ordinary Time



Following the season of Advent we enter what the Church calls Ordinary Time - always seems to me an unfortunate phrase as if it is somehow unimportant. We are in the in-between post Christmas period and the wind up to Lent and Easter. So it was somewhat of a surprise when choirboy was approached after mass by a visitor to see if the choir could record any of our music to help another parish learn some new music. This has been an issue for choirboy for sometime. That is, how to bring the music of our parish to a wider audience. We this in mind I have been experimenting with a number of net hosting services. There is unfortunately no ideal solution, but here is a temporary one: - a webspace where I can upload small mp3 files. For the technically minded this poses a problem as all my music files are kept as wav files. Anyway I do have one mp3 file at the moment of our Kyrie and here it is

http://uk.geocities.com/merrin@btinternet.com/Kyriemp3.mp3

Sorry about the quality and the link may well be dead at some point in the future as I get more technically minded. When the link loads try pressing enter twice and this might produce the desired effect. It is not meant to be a finished product, merely an indication of how I envisage the music to be performed. Enjoy if possible - I will try and improve quality and range of download. Please remember it is copyrighted by CCLI.

Entry: - Seek ye first

Gloria: - Gloria !

Alleluia: - Plymouth Alleluia

Offertory: - In bread we bring You

Holy Holy: - Gathering mass

Mem Accl: - Dying you destroyed our death

Amen: - We lift our hearts

Lamb of God: - Newquay mass (ii)

Communion: - Lord I am not worthy

Father we adore You

Recessional: - I am a new creation

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Feast of the Epiphany

Our celebration today included some fantastic close harmonies from the choir during our opening hymn. All unrehearsed - and although we will not be having choir practice this week, next week it will be back to the grindstone and the learning of some of choirboy's new compositions as well as music from other composers. To this end choirboy has been introducing some Graham Kendrick via CD. Flatteringly a number of people think that choirboy has produced this music himself - if only. I believe Graham Kendrick to be one of of our foremost Christian composer/performers and thoroughly recommend his music to all. His website has lots of music samples and music: -



Today we also had a pastoral letter from Bishop Christopher - I would love to be able to provide a web link to this but the dioscesan website has been down for the last 2 weeks. Hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly. Finally our very own Louise has been performing at Belushis - a Newquay nightspot. She hopes to do a Shania Twain set in the summer. Not one for our Sunday mass unfortunately.
Here she is - Shania that is, not Louise although there is a resemblance !







Entry: - The first Nowell

Gloria: - Gloria !

Alleluia: - Plymouth Alleluia

Offertory: - Take our bread we ask You

Holy Holy: - Gathering mass

Mem Accl: - Dying you destroyed our death

Amen: - We lift our hearts

Lamb of God: - Newquay mass (ii)

Communion: - Lord You’ve been good to me

Recessional: - We three kings of Orient are