Family Singing Repertoire 2: Intermediate Songs

Singing Irish songs (and performing Irish dance) with some friends for St. Patrick's Day at a local nursing home, circa 2008.

Well that was fun! It all started with our choir learning Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, which has been a tough song for them to learn. It seems to be coming together just in time to sing it for the Easter Vigil. (It is one of the psalms for Easter Vigil). But in the course of preparing for it, we discovered the series of YouTube videos that highlights one part at a time to help you learn it. (Here's the Soprano one.) It was the kids were having so much fun learning multiple parts on this that got me thinking about collecting our singing repertoire. And then yesterday, we had a great time listening to the recordings of some of the songs that I shared in yesterday's post (as well as breaking out into Rambles of Spring randomly after dinner).

It's difficult to quantify the different songs. We obviously have had kids in different age ranges all singing songs together for years, so this is just a very rough approximation.

More Challenging Rounds (or Round-ish songs):

Dona Nobis Pacem


Non Nobis Domine (from Kenneth Branaugh's Henry V) - Awfully fun and epic (and not too hard) to sing if you can figure out the two parts.


Magnificat (I'm not sure where this came from as we learned it from someone who learned it at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago. This is the best recording I was able to find, but we do not sing it this fast! It can be sung in up to six parts.)

Jubilate Deo

To Portsmouth, to Portsmouth, it is a Gallant Town (unable to find a recording of this one so far)


Great Tom is Cast (weird recording, but a good way to learn it, I suppose!)


When Jesus Wept


Per Crucem 

More Irish Favorites:

Mountain Dew

Winds of the Morning

Christmas Favorites: (many of which we can sing in parts as a family or with some friends)

The Angel Gabriel (I first discovered this via Sting's rendition on A Very Special Christmas album, the arrangement we use can be downloaded for free at this link)

O Come Divine Messiah (We first learned this via a Christmas Album by the Barra MacNeils - the version we learned as a family was the slightly different OCP arrangement)

Maria Walks Amid the Thorn

Stay tuned for more on this list as I am able to remember them!


I'd like to dedicate this series of posts to all of our family's musical mentors, teachers and choir directors, especially my mom, my siblings (with a special shout-out to Darlene!), Emma Napoli, Michael Morris, Golfredo Corradetti, William Mahrt, Mark Donnelly, Stephen Grimm, Peter Kwasniewski, Kay Moen, Ginny Smith, Deborah Coleman, Max Van Hecke, Julie Farrell, Danny Grimm and Susan Switalski.