Entrance and Communion Antiphons

My newest step in sketching out what we will sing through the next church year, simply because I was unaware of its existence for many of my years of music ministry, is to go to the Sacramentary and look at the Entrance Antiphons and Communion Antiphons. These long-overlooked little gems are real treasures, and they can root us ever more deeply in our tradition and place in the ever-circling liturgical year.

These are listed in the GIRM (General Instruction on the Roman Missal) as an option (the first listed option, but still just an option, so it's not a requirement or anything) for the Entrance and Communion songs. Debate rages heatedly among liturgical musicians about whether their placement at the beginning of the list of choices means that we should be doing them, and that the other options are there only if we can't pull off this ideal choice. My own sense is that they are valuable, and it might be very worthwhile to look toward them for the future, but that using them exclusively would be to all but wipe out the body of liturgical congregational song and put a large pointy dagger into whatever ecumenical strides have been made in past decades as some of the best of the Protestant hymnody has found its way into our worship. (That some of the hymnody that's found its way in isn't necessarily the "best" is immaterial, though sad:-)

So...while I have neither intent nor desire to replace our customary congregationally embraced singing with the Antiphons from the Missal, I do look at them for direction and guidance in planning. For one thing, they can be used simply to help choose the liturgical song for that moment in the liturgy: For example, the fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time has "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord" as the Communion Antiphon; that week, even though it's not until next June, I can tell you with some surety that we'll be singing Moore's "Taste and See." The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 3, has "Happy are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs!" We will very likely sing "Blest are They" at Communion that week. and so on.

Another possibility, for the liturgies with choirs, is to employ a choral "introit," sort of like a final prelude, immediately before the opening hymn. I wrote a setting of the Advent antiphons a few years ago, where the choir hummed "O Come Emmanuel" in harmony under a cantor's solo singing of the introit text. There are books like On Flowing Waters and Psallite (both from liturgical press, www.litpress.org,) with really nice settings of these texts, and we could start using these either as a prelude to Mass or as a "first" Communion song, during that space of time when the Communion Ministers are getting themselves organized (and then maybe repeat it after Communion).

In any case, these are some gorgeous texts which, even if we don't use them weekly (and there are parishes who do, by the way, with great success--the Psallite settings, especially, people seem able to pick up and sing very well very quickly), these antiphons can point the way for music and seasonal planning, and since discovering them some years ago my understanding of music ministry has deepened a great deal.

peace,
Jennifer