This post continues the Obsculta Preaching Series, sponsored by the Obsculta Preaching Initiative at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. In these posts, our authors engage a variety of ways in which scripture, preaching, and liturgical worship interact with the life of the faithful.
This is the second installment of a series of blog posts on how composers may have changed their consideration of what factors to take into account in creating settings of psalm texts for use in (Roman Catholic) liturgical worship.
My setting of “Psalm 22” from 1968 demonstrated a setting that employed very spare instrumental accompaniment (2 guitars and an electric bass), verses using end-rhymes paraphrasing the psalm text, and a congregational refrain meant to be sung in unison by adolescent male seminarians. I categorize this setting as an early example of a “folk-Mass” style, influenced by the folk-pop compositions of the day sung by, e.g., Joan Baez; Judy Collins; Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; and the experiments in English-language liturgical music settings by, e.g., the Dameans, the Montfort Missionaries, and Paul Quinlan, S.J., etc.
In 1995, GIA, Inc., included my setting of “My Shepherd (Psalm 23),” on the collection entitled We Come to Your Feast. The collection as a whole was structured after sung elements of the Eucharist, including my Mass for John Carroll. “My Shepherd” appears in the slot intended for a Responsorial Psalm.
Through my friend, Fr. Paul Kenny, long-term secretary of the Irish Church Music Association, I was introduced to Fr. John Paul Sheridan, who was at that time a deacon preparing for his ordination to the presbyterate. As I recall it, he asked if I could write a responsorial Psalm to be used at his first Mass and I was honored to do so.
I created a setting that I thought would both be faithful to the Church’s guidelines for the Responsorial Psalm but also have an Irish flavor, mostly by alternating a major key tonality for the antiphon with a minor key tonality for the verses. The most important value for me was to create an antiphon for the congregation to sing that would be easily learned and could bear multiple repetitions but could also be musically elaborated by a choir adding vocal harmonies.
I chose to write my own paraphrase of the biblical text, in effect creating a metrical psalm employing 9.8.9.6.[6]. meter and end-rhymes. This text also slightly stretched the patterns of the responsorial form by inviting the congregation to repeat the final line of the verse text sung by the cantor. I thus created a basic version that could be sung by a single cantor and a unison congregation on the antiphon with simple keyboard (piano/keyboard) accompaniment.
The recorded version demonstrated how the basic setting could be elaborated by using an “intoning” voice for the first hearing of the antiphon, a male cantor on verses 1 and 3, and a female cantor on verses 2 and 4. I yoked my love for Irish harp music with a fanciful idea of King David as “author” of the psalm by using harp as the principal accompaniment instrument for the recording. As in Jacques Berthier’s compositions for the community at Taizé, I also added parts for flute and oboe to provide a richer set of timbres.
This setting can be heard at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc4VYaPsrRo