The Eucharistic Acclamations

The Gospel and the consecration are the two most significant parts of the Mass. The music associated with these rites are therefore of the utmost importance when choosing what to sing. They should be sung before anything else is considered and are sung by the whole assembly ie priest, choir, congregation, servers,….

More background

Start here:

The best place to start is with the chants that are in the Missal itself. These were translated from the Latin and the melody adapted. They are meant to be sung unaccompanied which means they can be used anywhere. However, keyboard parts have been made available.

The music for the Missal Chants can be found on ICEL’s website. You will need to scroll down.

OCP also have audio files in addition to pdf’s. Go to the bottom of the page to find them.

Note that for the Amen to be effective, the presider will need to sing the doxology. If he really can’t manage the whole thing then singing just ‘for ever and ever’ will enable the assembly to respond in song.

Of course, you can sing the Latin originals and these will be found at CFE #470, 471 and Laudate #505, 506

In order to make it easier for the congregation I would suggest that you initially only use one of the three memorial acclamations.

Taking it further:

Unless your hymn book was published after 2011 it will not contain settings using the revised texts. You will need to use another resource.

If your congregation were used to singing the acclamations prior to 2011 then you may find a revised setting to be most useful as they won’t need to learn a completely new tune. See examples of revised settings here.

On the other hand, it could make it more difficult to adapt to new words so you might want to look at settings that have been written specifically for the revised translation. See some suggestions here.

Whichever route you choose make sure that you do sing all three of Sanctus, memorial acclamation, amen. They are all the people’s part of the prayer and it doesn’t make sense to sing only some of it.

Where can I find further resources?

Decani Music published a book of settings called ‘Glory to God’ which is an excellent resource.

Sing the Mass – publication by the Irish Church Music Association.

Martin Foster at Bearmusic.info has several settings which are free to download and use.

Nick Baty at conceptmusiconline.com has some fairly easy settings.

Other, more contemporary, settings can be found at CJMmusic.com, Mike Anderson.net and Kate Keefe at musicformass.co.uk.

From the USA, the big publishers all have large selections.

GIA (make sure you get something that says ‘ revised setting’)
OCP
Liturgical Press

This is not an exhaustive list and other sources are available.

One thing to note:

It is not permitted to substitute other chants for those found in the Order of Mass, for example, at the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

GIRM 366

This applies to the Eucharistic acclamations as well. It is over ten years since the words of Mass changed and, while there was some initial leeway, allowing the singing of settings that did not use the revised text, this was ended in 2014.

What this means in practice is that only the actual texts are permitted to be used. You may not replace them with a paraphrase, eg Israeli mass, or with another text, eg. ‘O come let us adore him’ for a memorial acclamation. ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen’ is no longer used.