Messing with the Responsorial Psalm

[Guitar]

I never know if this repeated week after week responsorial hymn is because the choir is too lazy to learn a new one or if they thing we are too dumb to learn a one line response

Or, perhaps neither is the case and it’s for some other reason entirely that doesn’t involve incompetence or insult.

I sing the psalm weekly and never change the ICEL words. If it has a longer than usual response or the melody is a little tricky, we have a short rehearsal at five minutes to - announce the psalm will be sung, say “the words of the response are …” in case anyone’s forgotten their glasses and can’t read the bulletin or missal, then sing it four times end to end. We get a much stronger response for having had this 30-second run-through.

My parish does a common response + verses of the day for Advent, Lent, Easter and Christmas (a different response for each season, that is, not the same one for all) and the complete *psalm du jour *at other times. The common response and musical setting for the verses (done at the request of the liturgy planning folks) is intended to help delineate the seasons from ordinary time and also to get the psalm sung at least in those seasons for Masses where they would otherwise be recited because some of the musicians struggle with new material. (Personally, I think if you can’t cope with a new simple psalm setting a week, perhaps you’re not up to the job but my job is to coordinate what I’m given, I don’t hire or fire.) Other than using a seasonal response, though, we never mess with the words.