Take our bread

Take our bread. Joe Wise* (1939– ).  ‘Take our bread’ was written in 1966 as a song to prepare worshippers to receive the Eucharist. It was published in Wise’s folk mass, ‘Gonna sing, my Lord’ (1966), appearing as the offertory in the album, Gonna Sing My Lord: Music for Worship (1966). This folk mass and ‘Christ has died, Alleluia’ (1971) are examples of this movement that dominated Roman Catholic music composition in the 1960s and 1970s.  Similar to early Pentecostal praise choruses of the late 1960s and early 1970s, ‘Take our bread’ differs from the strophic hymns of Protestant worship and the Latin hymns of the Pre-Vatican II Catholic Mass. Its irregular meter and refrain connected it...