What did we sing … on the 4th Sunday of Lent Year A 2023?

Time for another “What did we sing?” post I think. I’ll be doing a few of these over the next weeks as I think it is particularly interesting to compare what different places are singing on Sundays where there is a definite ‘theme’. (I don’t really like the idea of themes for Mass but there are some Sundays when the readings do provide strong suggestions for the music.)

This particular Sunday has the Gospel of the man born blind and the theme(!) of light and darkness is taken up in the 2nd reading from the letter to the Ephesians. The first reading is the choosing and anointing of David by Samuel and the psalm is The Lord’s my shepherd. The entrance antiphon, of course, is ‘Rejoice, Jerusalem…’ as this is Laetare Sunday. In the UK it is also Mother’s Day.

Would the music choices focus on the psalm which is so well known or would they look more towards the Gospel? And if they did, what aspect would they pick up? Would it be forgiveness of sins or healing the sick, or would it be light in the darkness? Or would the focus be on the season of Lent and perhaps use more traditional Lenten hymns?

So here is what was actually sung, by popularity.

My diocese

• Sung on 7 occasions – The Lord’s my shepherd; Amazing grace
• Sung on 6 occasions – Be thou my vision; The light of Christ
• Sung on 5 occasions – O Mother blest; Thou whose almighty word
• Sung on 3 occasions – The king of love

The rest of England

• Sung on 11 occasions – Amazing grace
• Sung on 9 occasions – Christ be our light
• Sung on 8 occasions – The Lord’s my shepherd
• Sung on 5 occasions – Colours of day
• Sung on 4 occasions – The light of Christ

I think that answers the questions then! ‘Amazing grace’ came straight from the Gospel; ‘I was blind but now I see’. A large number of places chose to sing a setting of psalm 22/23, even if they didn’t sing it as the responsorial psalm. The rest of the most frequently sung hymns were to do with light and being able to see. With one exception.

What was rather noticeable was the absence of hymns that would be described as Lenten. Of course, this is Laetare Sunday so we might expect the music to be a little less Lenten. Maybe this is something I will return to in a later post. I do intend to look at the overall season of Lent.

One of the reasons I wanted to look a little more closely at the music choices for today was because of the psalm. As there is such a well-known (in fact more than one)metrical version, would more places choose to sing it? My gut feeling was that they would but I’m not sure I was right. In our diocese, the psalm was sung on 8 out of 25 streams or 32%. Three of these used ‘Crimond’ and a fourth used the Stuart Townend version. Of the rest, one place sang the lovely setting by Gelineau, while the others opted for various chant settings. In the rest of England there was a slightly bigger percentage of 14 out of 33 or 42%. who sang it. There was more variety here too. Three places again used ‘Crimond’ but the same number went for the Christopher Walker ‘Because the Lord is my shepherd’. One place sang a setting to ‘Brother James’ Air’ and another used the version from the Psallite collection. The rest were content with chant settings. It will be interesting to see if the percentages change on the 4th Sunday of Easter when we have the same psalm.