Common Ground Song 19 - ‘Celtic Alleluia’
Words & music: Fintan O’Carroll & Christopher Walker © OCP Publications
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMAGmGQRxG8
Featured image: cover of a Gospel book.

This modern Catholic song from Ireland is based on a setting of the Alleluia from Lourdes in France. French tune, Irish setting, American performance (see link): the worldwide nature of the church, and the internationally recognised word ‘Alleluia’, enable this song to travel widely, and not only within the Catholic church: I first came across it in the ‘high’ Anglican tradition. The word ‘alleluia’ simply means ‘Praise God’, which is what the Church does, always and everywhere, but particularly when we come together to hear the Bible read and explained in church.

The book gives eight verses in addition to the chorus; I will not copy them all here, but briefly they celebrate the Word of God (both in the sense of Jesus as his incarnation, and in the sense of the words of the bible), and then the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. The verses were new to me, as I have only previously heard the chorus sung by itself, usually as the antiphon to the reading from the Gospel, in churches where this is one of the most important parts of the worship. Typically, a cantor (soloist) would sing the alleluias once, then again with the congregation joining in, and everyone sings it once more after the reading.

The various video renditions of it online vary from a soloist to a massed choir, but the one linked above (from a Catholic church is the USA) is the only one I found that includes verses as well as the chorus. Interestingly, the verses there (for the dismissal at the end of the Mass) are totally different from the set of eight given in Common Ground, indicating that in practice a song of this nature can be easily adapted to fit any liturgical context by writing different words for the verses (or a selection of the ones in the book can be used, according to the occasion). Normally any verses would be sung by a cantor, as here. But it takes a skilled cantor to fit the words to the tune, which with several syncopated notes and accidentals is not easy to perfect.

Note: if any of the terms used above are obscure to the reader, I suggest looking them up here