After SS Peter & Paul (28th June) the lockdown in England was lifted and Mass was allowed to be celebrated in church again. From then on I stopped recording the hymns, which I’d been doing during lockdown so that parishioners could learn them and sing along while I played over zoom.
Unfortunately we went back into lockdown at the beginning of November. There wasn’t much warning that church services would be banned, so we weren’t able to get the organ hooked up to Zoom (which Fr. Mark arranged at the last minute), so there was no music that week. I started playing over the Zoom call again the following week, but just a verse for the entrance and a few verses for communion and recessional but not the full hymn.
I hope and pray that the 1st Sunday in Advent will be the last time we’re forced to do this. The 4 week lockdown ends on the 2nd December and it seems that church services can resume. Maybe ‘organ only’ is suitably penitential for Advent, but Christmas without carols will be very strange.