Liturgical Music

As a parish, our use of music is guided by the Second Vatican Council Instruction on Music in the Liturgy: Musicam Sacram. When we integrate music into the Liturgy, some or our key considerations are as follows:

• The vast majority of the parish community should feel able to participate in sung liturgy; it should not be over-complex.
• Liturgical music should not be intoxicating, over-elaborate or alienating. Key words are: reverence, joy, beauty and participation. That can be challenging, especially in today's diverse parish, but it's a challenge we love and which we try to embrace.
• The ordinarium texts of the Liturgy (Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, etc.) cannot be paraphrased to fit the music.
• The musicians' first priority is the people's praising, and engaging with God through the sacred liturgy.

As a parish, we hold a 'One Licence' music licence, which legally entitles us to print and use up-to-date music from the majority of catholic music publishers. This is combined with musical settings that are composed in-house by members of the music team. We try to draw our music from both traditional and contemporary sources.

We are a small mixed (male/female) adult choir, leading the liturgical music at both churches. If you would like to become a member, please do approach us; we can of course be found in the choir loft during sung Masses, You can feel at ease with us—we are not professional musicians and we don't take ourselves too seriously, though as you would expect, we are are very serious about giving best we can to the sacred liturgy, which is our first priority.