One never knows though. I filled in for our Saturday Vigil and had to make a face and cup an ear before "At the Lamb's high Feast" finally got going.

At the Lamb’s High Feast really gets the congregation going.

At my current parish, this was an unfamiliar song to a significant percentage of the congregation. I even got a complaint once for playing too much unfamiliar music at Easter, with this listed as one of the "unfamiliar songs."

I view "At the Lamb’s High Feast" as a critically important hymn for everyone to know. I've programmed it many times and now the congregation knows it. Now they sing it very well!

At my current parish, this was an unfamiliar song to a significant percentage of the congregation. I even got a complaint once for playing too much unfamiliar music at Easter, with this listed as one of the "unfamiliar songs."

Sounds like a suggestion to sing it every Sunday of Easter in order to make it familiar. Maybe that’s why our MD has programmed JCIRT at every Easter Mass this year...or because it’s trending on social media this year.

I've never had the cahones to do the same hymn multiple weeks in a row, although I've done a few hymns every other, or every third week for 2 or 3 cycles.

I've never had the cahones to do the same hymn multiple weeks in a row, although I've done a few hymns every other, or every third week for 2 or 3 cycles.

Back when I sang in parish’s Latin Mass Community’s choir and schola, I somehow ended up taking over choosing the hymns for Mass. There was one month or so where I got caught up on a Hyfrydol hyperfixation (in fairness, our MD plays it better than everyone else I’ve heard play it. Not like a slow dirge.), but didn’t think I could get away with the same hymn every week, so instead I picked a different hymn that was also set to Hyfrydol.

There are a lot of hymns in Breaking Bread that are set to Hyfrydol. The only one I didn’t choose was the marriage one that after reading the words, I was certain it had a “molto fromaggio” marking. I prefer the original Welsh version, which is about Jesus, swords, and terrorizing demons, fighting temptation, etc.

Send Us Thine Asteroid, O Lord

A prayer I quote often.

For the sake of clarification, I was referring to that great eschatological hymn set to Old Hundredth, https://youtu.be/hkTgYiMDRHY?si=AJ_nHpJ35eb4U2_8. I won’t be trying to sing All People That On Earth Do Dwell from memory during Mass anymore.

Big news. This thread, and specifically the contribution of @Don9of11, has spurred me to reduce the number of Credo settings we use in the year from 4 to 3 (one of which will only be used 3 times per year, so basically 2), and the number of mass settings from 6 to 4, with the occasional polyphonic splurge. Earlier this evening I got the priest's sign off on it.

I know it could sound like a step backwards, but I've been convinced that in my circumstances this is just more conducive to congregational singing. And having heard some fantastic congregational singing in my life, I'm willing to forego a bit of the symbolic tooling of extra settings to try and have that at my parish.

Like @ServiamScores I'm just psychologically not able to program the same hymn twice in a row, but I have rejigged my vernacular hymn plans to include more repetition, and modestly pruned down the overall quantity.

We sing I, IV, VIII, IX, XI, XVII, and XVIII. I’m going to add XII in the fall. So I’m moving in the opposite direction; they sing some things so well and others hardly at all, but that’s also fine. They are very active when they do know something; last night we did IV which they know less well, but they can do the Kyrie and Ite. They love the Regina Caeli. We run back “Great St Joseph Son of David” to IN BABILONE each year for his two feasts. I’ll probably reuse that tune for Ascensiontide instead of REX GLORIAE, and for the Faber text if we ever add that: two to three pairings is really solid for me, and it makes life easy if I can copy the file, delete voice 1 lyrics (voice 2 is verse numbers!), and add the new words. Boom, new hymn.

Speaking of HYFRYDOL: I need an 87.87D tune for Wordsworth’s “Alleluia, Alleluia”. LUX EOI and HYMN TO JOY are not going to work here (the first is too hard, and the people with say dislike the latter). HYFRYDOL already has multiple texts for it. PLEADING SAVIOR works and would give me a second text for a tune that they get once a year right now (actually eight days: we do it for the Assumption novena that ends with Vespers on night nine, hence only eight days).

But I don’t know, something feels off. Maybe I’m just too in my head over the pairing.

We hardly do IX now that we do polyphony which is a shame, but they don’t sing at 6 AM anyway (Rorate Mass) so it wouldn’t matter what Gregorian ordinary we sing. Immaculate Heart will also always be a chant Mass, more often than not Annunciation too.

We either do IV sparingly (3 to 4 times a year: the two St Josephs, Holy Thursday, Exaltation of the Cross if it isn’t polyphonic) or a lot (if we don’t have polyphony for the feasts in May/June that usually fall on weekdays: Ascension, Corpus, etc.)

VIII comes out for weddings and for want of something better.

We use Credo I so much that I am willing to use III when we do Mass XII, and we use III when we have a polyphonic setting.