It’s almost a year since I did my first ‘What did we sing‘ post. I looked at the music sung during Lent of 2022 Year C. The most popular hymn was ‘God forgave my sin’. Would it be the same this year? Let’s take a look.
- Sung on 15 occasions – I am the bread of life
- Sung on 13 occasions – Amazing grace
- Sung on 12 occasions – Be thou my vision
- Sung on 11 occasions – Be not afraid; Guide me O thou great redeemer
- Sung on 9 occasions – As the deer pants for the water; Be still for the presence; Blest are you Lord; Dear Lord and Father; Immortal, invisible
- Sung on 8 occasions – Forty days and forty nights
- Sung on 7 occasions – Abba, abba Father; Eagles wings; God forgave my sin; Lead us heavenly Father, lead us; O Lord my God; Shine Jesus shine; The light of Christ; The Lord’s my shepherd
So that’s the top 19 hymns for the season of Lent. I’ve got to say, that if you take ‘Forty days’ out, you could be forgiven for not knowing they were sung during Lent. There seems to be few places now who sing the more traditional Lenten hymns but possibly this is because more places are using a guitar accompaniment and they don’t work so well. OK most of them don’t work at all! But there are newer hymns that reflect the season really well and they don’t appear to be known either. I feel a post about Lenten music coming up at some point.
Sadly, of the 15 times that ‘I am the bread of life’ was sung, it was twice sung as the psalm. Why? I have no idea. It isn’t a psalm. Full stop. If you want to replace the psalm of the day then use a common psalm.
Equally sadly, we had one place start Lent by singing ‘Abba Father send you spirit’ while another used ‘Seek ye first’ on a later Sunday. And the problem here? We don’t say or sing Alleluia during Lent. Even in hymns. If you like, we fast from the word until it is brought back in triumph with the solemn alleluia during the Easter vigil.
Enough of the negatives though. What were the positives? I think one of them has to be the fact that people are obviously looking at the readings and trying to link them to the hymn choices. And the readings in Lent of Year A give you plenty of choice. Another positive is the variety of music sung. There were a total of 180 different hymns compared with just over 150 last year. It’s not a straight comparison though because it isn’t quite the same places streaming as last year.
Unfortunately, ME got in the way of looking at streams from the rest of England for the whole of Lent so I can’t tell you what was sung elsewhere.
Music, Liturgy and ME 