On the first Sunday in February, the St. Cecelia St. Alban Choir will help teach a new hymn tune for “Sing alleluia forth in duteous praise.” The hymn text has appeared in both the Hymnal 1940  and the Hymnal 1982. This tune appears in Wonder, Love and Praise, the 1997 supplement to the current hymnal.
This choir has been learning about the texts of the service music sung each Sunday. The “Gloria in Excelsis” begins with the song the angels sang at Jesus’ birth. The “Sanctus” begins with the song the seraphim continually sing at the throne of God (“Holy, holy, holy”), and ends with the song that people sang as Jesus rode into Jerusalem (“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”) It thus unites songs sung in heaven and on earth.

“Sing alleluia forth in duteous praise” calls all beings, heavenly and earthly, to sing a united song, “an endless alleluia.” It even tells that such a mighty song is “rest and food and deep delight to saints forgiven.” Pretty amazing - a huge concept in a tune which is only nine measures long! Since the first Sunday in February is the last Sunday in Epiphany, it is the last time to sing or say “alleluia” until Easter Sunday. While the congregation does not sing alleluia during Lent, it is possible to imagine the endless alleluia continuing in stead.

On the second Sunday of February, the season of Lent returns, and the service music will change to reflect the change of seasons and remind people, along with the purple paraments and Lenten lessons, that it is a penitential preparation season.

This first Sunday of Lent the Great Litany (in the hymnal service music section it is S-67) will be sung, a prayer first published in English in 1544, five years before the first Book of Common Prayer. When sung before the Eucharist, as it will be on that Sunday, the prayer consists of four sections: invocations of the Trinity, petitions for deliverance from disaster and evil, obsecrations (or earnest entreaties) of pleading of the person and merits of Christ, and intercessions which end with the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy). The Gloria in excelsis (S-280, Glory to God in the highest) will not be sung on that day, nor again until Easter Sunday.

Beginning the third Sunday of February (Lent 2), the Trisagion (S-102) will be sung, a text that was in use at least since the year 451 as a refrain sung three times at the end of the entrance procession. At Pohick, it will be sung three times also.

A new, more penitential, psalm tune will be sung during Lent (S-408, to be printed in an insert), still following the same method of psalm singing known as Simplified Anglican Chant.
The congregation will return to the Hurd setting for the Sanctus (S-124) and add the Hurd Agnus Dei (S-161) in Rite II, as sung last year. In Rite I, the Merbecke Kyrie (S-90) will be sung, the Willan Sanctus (S-114) will be retained, and the Merbecke Agnus Dei (S-157) will be added.