Ascension, Rabbula Gospels, 6th c.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Easter VII

May 13, 2018

8 AM Said Mass

10 AM Sung Mass

Prelude

Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)

Hymns

Love’s redeeming work is done (SAVANNAH)

Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)

The head that once was crowned with thorns (ST MAGNUS)

Anthems

Non vos relinquam orphanos, William Byrd

O Rex gloriae, William Byrd

Postlude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Samuel Scheidt

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Healy Willan

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Prelude

Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, Johann Pachelbel

On the harmonium.

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Hymns

Love’s redeeming work is done (SAVANNAH)

Love’s redeeming work is done by Charles Wesley is a cento composed of stanxas ii.-v.,x., of his hymn “Christ the Lord is risen to-day.” Books originating in the Church of England tradition use the tune SAVANNAH, first found in England in John Wesley’s A Collection of Tunes, Set to Music, as they are commonly sung at the Foundery (1742), with the name HERNHUTH, which indicates its origins in 18th-century Moravian books. The name SAVANNAH comes from the Moravian settlement at Savannah, Georgia. Wesley accompanied the Moravians on their voyage from England to Savannah and was deeply impressed by their calm and faith during a storm that panicked the sailors.

1 Love’s redeeming work is done;
fought the fight, the battle won:
lo, our Sun’s eclipse is o’er,
lo, he sets in blood no more.
2 Vain the stone, the watch, the seal;
Christ has burst the gates of hell;
death in vain forbids his rise;
Christ has opened paradise.
3 Lives again our glorious King;
where, O death, is now thy sting?
dying once, he all doth save;
where thy victory, O grave?
4 Soar we now where Christ has led,
following our exalted Head;
made like him, like him we rise;
ours the cross, the grave, the skies.
5 Hail the Lord of earth and heaven!
Praise to thee by both be given:
thee we greet triumphant now;
hail, the Resurrection Thou!

Here is the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Choir. Here is a 1970 version from Guilford Cathedral.

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Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)

Let all mortal flesh keep silence is a paraphrase by James Moultrie (1829—1885) of the Cherubic Hymn from the Liturgy of St. James of the Eastern Church. The hymn dates to the third century. It is chanted as the bread and wine are carried to the altar. The Greek text reads: “Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and in itself consider nothing of earth; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed, and given as food to the believers; and there go before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.” Here is the hymn in the 4th Plagal. Here is the Great Entrance.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six wingèd seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High

Her is the King’s College, Cambridge, choir.

Gerald Moultrie was a Victorian public schoolmaster and Anglican hymnographer born on September 16, 1829, at Rugby Rectory, Warwickshire, England. He died on April 25, 1885, Southleigh, England.

PICARDY is a hymn tune, based on a French carol; it is in a minor key and its meter is 8.7.8.7.8.7. Its name comes from the province of France from where it is thought to originate. The tune dates back at least to the 17th century, and was originally used for the folk song “Jésus-Christ s’habille en pauvre”. First published in the 1848 collection Chansons populaires des provinces de France, “Picardy” was most famously arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1906 for the hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.

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The head that once was crowned with thorns (ST MAGNUS)

The Head that once was crowned with thorns was written by  Thomas Kelly (1769-1854), who based this hymn on Hebrews 2: 9-10 which speaks of Christ’s glory and the universal message of grace that is available because of Christ’s suffering: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

Kelly employs the poetic device of hypotyposis – a vivid description of a scene or events in words – that provides the singer with a glimpse of the splendor of heaven, which is contrasted with the suffering of the cross and the suffering of all who follow Christ on earth.

1 The head that once was crowned with thorns
is crowned with glory now:
a royal diadem adorns
the mighty Victor’s brow.

2 The highest place that heaven affords
is his, is his by right,
the King of kings, and Lord of lords,
and heaven’s eternal Light;

3 The joy of all who dwell above,
the joy of all below,
to whom he manifests his love,
and grants his name to know.

4 To them the cross, with all its shame,
with all its grace, is given:
their name, an everlasting name,
their joy, the joy of heaven.

5 They suffer with their Lord below,
they reign with him above;
their profit and their joy to know
the mystery of his love.

6 The cross he bore is life and health,
though shame and death to him;
his people’s hope, his people’s wealth,
their everlasting theme.

Here is the Choir of the King’s School.

Thomas Kelly

Son of a judge, Kelly attended Trinity College (BA 1789) and planned to be a lawyer. After converting to Christ, though, his career plans changed to the ministry. He became an Anglican priest in 1792, but eventually became one of the famous dissenting ministers. He wrote over 760 hymns. Miller’s Singers of the Church (1869) says of him:

Mr. Kelly was a man of great and varied learning, skilled in the Oriental tongues, and an excellent Bible critic. He was possessed also of musical talent, and composed and published a work that was received with favour, consisting of music adapted to every form of metre in his hymn-book. Naturally of an amiable disposition and thorough in his Christian piety, Mr. Kelly became the friend of good men, and the advocate of every worthy, benevolent, and religious cause. He was admired alike for his zeal and his humility; and his liberality found ample scope in Ireland, especially during the year of famine.

Jeremiah Clarke

The tune ST MAGNUS  first appeared in Henry Playford’s Divine Companion(1707 ed.) as an anonymous tune with soprano and bass parts. The tune was later credited to Jeremiah Clark (b. London, England, c. 1670; d. London, 1707), who was a chorister in the Chapel Royal and sang at the coronation of James II in 1685. Later he served as organist in Winchester College, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Chapel Royal. He shot himself to death in a fit of depression, apparently because of an unhappy romance. Supported by Queen Anne, Clark was a prominent composer in his day, writing songs for the stage as well as anthems, psalm tunes, and harpsichord works.
Although ST. MAGNUS was originally used as a setting for Psalm 117, it has been associated with this text since they were combined in the 1868 Appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern. The tune is named for the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, built by Christopher Wren in 1676 on Lower Thames Street near the old London Bridge, England.

ST. MAGNUS consists of two long lines, each of which has its own sense of climax. The octave leap in the final phrase has a stunning effect, like a vault in a Gothic cathedral.

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Anthems

Non vos relinquam orphanos, William Byrd (1540-1623)

Non vos relinquam orphanos. Alleluia. Vado, et venio ad vos. Alleluia. Et gaudebit, cor vestrum. Alleluia.

I will not leave you comfortless. Alleluia. I go, and I will come to you. Alleluia. And your heart shall rejoice. Alleluia.

Here are the Cambridge Singers.

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O Rex gloriae, William Byrd (1540-1623)

O Rex gloriae, Domine virtutum, qui triumphator hodie super omnes coelos ascendisti; ne derelinquas nos orphanos, sed mitte promissum Patris in nos, spiritum veritatis. Alleluia.

O King of glory, Lord of all power, who ascended to heaven on this day triumphant over all; do not leave us as orphans, but send us the Father’s promise, the spirit of truth. Alleluia.

Here are the New Cambridge Singers.

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Postlude

Christ lag in Todesbanden,  Samuel Scheidt (1587-1634)

Here on the organ.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Easter VI

May 6, 2018

8:00 AM Said Mass

10:00 AM Sung Mass

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Prelude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Pachelbel

Hymns

Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands (CHRIST LAG IN TODESBANDEN)

Come down, o Love divine (DOWN AMPNEY)

Alleluia! sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)

Anthems

A new commandment, Thomas Tallis

Regina coeli, laetare, Charpentier

Common

Missa S. Maria Magdelena, Healey Willan

Postlude

Fantasy on Hyfrydol, Henry Coleman

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Prelude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Pachelbel

Here is the prelude.

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Hymns

Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands (CHRIST LAG IN TODESBANDEN)

Martin Luther wrote this adaptation of the Easter sequence, Victimae paschali laudes. The hymn captures the essence of the classic struggle between life and death. The resurrection represents the apex of this battle. With Christ’s rising from the grave, the “strong bands” of death were broken. Stanza two talks about a “strange and dreadful strife” between the powers of life and death. But the victory went to life when death was “stripped of power.” The sting of death (I Corinthians 15:56) “is lost forever.” The third stanza is one of rejoicing because “Christ is himself the joy of all.” “The Sun” both warms and lights us. “The night of sin is ended.” The final stanza would have been seen in light of the Eucharist with a reference that contrasts the “true bread of heaven” with the “old and wicked leaven” (Mt 16:6) . The reference to the Eucharist is even stronger as the hymn closes:

Christ alone our souls will feed;
he is our meat and drink indeed;
faith lives upon no other! Alleluia!

1 Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands,
for our offenses given;
but now at God’s right hand He stands
and brings us light from heaven.
Therefore let us joyful be
and sing to God right thankfully
loud songs of hallelujah.
Alleuia!

2 It was a strange and dreadful strife
when life and death contended;
the victory remained with life,
the reign of death was ended.
Holy Scripture plainly saith
that death is swallowed up by death;
his sting is lost forever.
Alleluia!

3 Here the true Paschal Lamb we see,
whom God so freely gave us;
He died on the accursed tree –
so strong His love to save us.
See, His blood doth mark our door;
faith points to it, death passes o’er,
and Satan cannot harm us.
Hallelujah!

4 Then let us feast this Easter Day
On Christ, the bread of heaven;
The Word of grace has purged away
The old and evil leaven.
Christ alone our souls will feed;
He is our meat and drink indeed;
Faith lives upon no other!
Alleluia!

Here is a festival version with organ and orchestra. Here is a dramatized version with Luther at the organ and Katherine von Bora singing.

Here are the seven original stanzas:

Christ lag in Todesbanden
Für unsre Sünd gegeben,,
Er ist wieder erstanden
Und hat uns bracht das Leben;
Des wir sollen fröhlich sein,,
Gott loben und ihm dankbar sein
Und singen halleluja,,
Halleluja!

Christ lay in death’s bonds
handed over for our sins,
he is risen again
and has brought us life
For this we should be joyful,
praise God and be thankful to him
and sing allelluia,
Alleluia

2

Den Tod niemand zwingen kunnt
Bei allen Menschenkindern,.
Das macht’ alles unsre Sünd,
Kein Unschuld war zu finden..
Davon kam der Tod so bald
Und nahm über uns Gewalt,
Hielt uns in seinem Reich gefangen..
Halleluja!

Nobody could overcome death
among all the children of mankind.
Our sin was the cause of all this,
no innocence was to be found.
Therefore death came so quickly
and seized power over us,.
held us captive in his kingdom.
Alleluia !

3

Jesus Christus, Gottes Sohn,,
An unser Statt ist kommen
Und hat die Sünde weggetan,
Damit dem Tod genommen
All sein Recht und sein Gewalt,
Da bleibet nichts denn Tods Gestalt,
Den Stach’l hat er verloren.
Halleluja!

Jesus Christ, God’s son,
has come to our place
and has put aside our sins,
and in this way from death has taken
all his rights and his power,
here remains nothing but death’s outward form,
it has lost its sting.
Alleluia!

4

Es war ein wunderlicher Krieg,
Da Tod und Leben rungen,
Das Leben behielt den Sieg,,
Es hat den Tod verschlungen.
Die Schrift hat verkündigt das,
Wie ein Tod den andern fraß,
Ein Spott aus dem Tod ist worden.
Halleluja!

It was a strange battle
where death and life struggled.
Life won the victory,
it has swallowed up death
Scripture has proclaimed
how one death ate the other,
death has become a mockery.
Alleluia

5

Hier ist das rechte Osterlamm,
Davon Gott hat geboten,
Das ist hoch an des Kreuzes Stamm
In heißer Lieb gebraten,
Das Blut zeichnet unsre Tür,
Das hält der Glaub dem Tode für,
Der Würger kann uns nicht mehr schaden.
Halleluja!

Here is the true Easter lamb
that God has offered
which high on the trunk of the cross
is roasted in burning love,
whose blood marks our doors,
which faith holds in front of death,
the strangler can harm us no more
Alleluia

6

So feiern wir das hohe Fest
Mit Herzensfreud und Wonne,
Das uns der Herre scheinen läßt,
Er ist selber die Sonne,
Der durch seiner Gnade Glanz
Erleuchtet unsre Herzen ganz,
Der Sünden Nacht ist verschwunden..
Halleluja!

Thus we celebrate the high feast
with joy in our hearts and delight
that the Lord lets shine for us,
He is himself the sun
who through the brilliance of his grace
enlightens our hearts completely,
the night of sin has disappeared.
Alleluia !

7

Wir essen und leben wohl
In rechten Osterfladen,
Der alte Sauerteig nicht soll
Sein bei dem Wort Gnaden,
Christus will die Koste sein
Und speisen die Seel allein,,
Der Glaub will keins andern leben..
Halleluja!

We eat and live well
on the right Easter cakes,
the old sour-dough should not
be with the word grace,
Christ will be our food
and alone feed the soul,
faith will live in no other way.
Alleluiia!

The original version had seven stanzas and appeared first in Enchiridion (1524). Richard Massie (1800-1887) provided an English translation of all seven German stanzas in Martin Luther’s Spiritual Songs(1854). Massie, an Englishman and rector of St. Bride’s Church in Chester, was self-taught in German, but became one of the leading translators of hymns from the German of his day. The shortening of the hymn to four stanzas in English took place later in the 19th century in the Church of England Hymn Book

CHRIST LAG IN TODESBANDEN is an adaptation of a medieval chant used for “Victimae Paschali laudes”. The tune’s arrangement is credited to Johann Walther (b. Kahla, Thuringia, Germany, 1496: d. Torgau, Germany, 1570), in whose 1524 Geystliche Gesangk Buchleyn it was first published. But it is possible that Luther also had a hand in its arrangement. Walther was one of the great early influences in Lutheran church music. At first he seemed destined to be primarily a court musician. A singer in the choir of the Elector of Saxony in the Torgau court in 1521, he became the court’s music director in 1525. After the court orchestra was disbanded in 1530 and reconstituted by the town, Walther became cantor at the local school in 1534 and directed the music in several churches. He served the Elector of Saxony at the Dresden court from 1548 to 1554 and then retired in Torgau. Walther met Martin Luther in 1525 and lived with him for three weeks to help in the preparation of Luther’s German Mass. In 1524 Walther published the first edition of a collection of German hymns, Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn. This collection and several later hymnals compiled by Walther went through many later editions and made a permanent impact on Lutheran hymnody. One of the earliest and best-known Lutheran chorales, CHRIST LAG IN TODESBANDEN is a magnificent tune in rounded bar form (AABA).

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Come down, o Love divine (DOWN AMPNEY)

Bianco of Siena (c. 1345-c. 1412) was born in Anciolina, a small hamlet in Tuscany, Italy, but moved at a young age to Siena where he labored as a wood carver. We have little information about the life of this mystic; what we do know is due to the efforts of Feo Belcari (1410-1484), a poet and playwright from Florence, who reconstructed Bianco’s biography from his poetry.

According to Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, edited by Christopher Kleinhenz, “Bianco joined the Gesuati, a lay order founded by Giovanni Colombini, and lived for a number of years in a monastery of the order in Cittè di Castello. He spent the last years of his life in Venice.”

Bianco composed in the laude form, a vernacular sacred song used outside of the medieval Catholic liturgy. Lauda spirituale were popular well into the 19th century. Most laude were composed in a melody-only form—though polyphonic, or multi-part, laude developed in Italy in the early 15th century.

Bianco’s more than 100 laude may be divided into two groups—doctrinal and mystical. In Dr. Kleinhenz’s volume, we gain insight into Bianco’s poetry: “Inspired by intense religious zeal, his poetry has its mystical roots in that of Jacopone da Todi, particularly in regard to the theme of divine madness. The immediacy of Bianco’s language and the unadorned simplicity of his statements enhanced the popular appeal of his poetry.”

“Come Down, O Love Divine” (“Discendi, amor santo”) is a translation of four of the original eight stanzas from Laudi Spirituali del Bianco de Siena, Lucca, 1851.

Richard Littledale (1833-1890), an Irish scholar and minister, translated four of the stanzas that appeared in the People’s Hymnal (1867). The hymn’s popularity increased significantly after it appeared in the English Hymnal (1906), one of the most influential hymnals of the early 20th century, with a musical setting by the eminent English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).
Stanza three of the four English-language stanzas is omitted from most hymnals:

Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

While the stanza starts out strongly, the translation seems strained and lacks the directness and beauty of the remaining three stanzas. Lutheran hymn writer Gracia Grindal notes that “the entire hymn is an invocation to the Holy Spirit [to] ‘kindle’ the heart so that it burns with the ardor of the Spirit.”

The text is intense—intensely personal and intensely passionate. The incipit (first line) invokes the Holy Spirit to “seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.” Classic images of Pentecost appear throughout the hymn, especially those that relate to fire. Stanza one mentions “ardor glowing” and “kindle . . . thy holy flame.” Stanza two continues the flame images with “freely burn,” “dust and ashes in its heat consuming.”

The final stanza is a powerful statement of total commitment to love, to “create a place/wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.”

1 Come down, O Love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

2 O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

3 And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till he become the place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.

Here is the choir of King’s College, Cambridge.

The Old Vicarage in Down Ampney was the birthplace of Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1872. A tune he composed, used for the hymn “Come Down, O Love Divine”, is titled “Down Ampney” in its honour.

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Alleluia! sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)

Alleluia! sing to Jesus was written by William Chatterton Dix (1837—1898). Revelation 5:9 describes this eschatological scene of joy and glory: “And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because You were slain, and with Your blood You purchased for God members of every tribe and language and nation.’”  Dix invites us to sing that new song of praise to our ascended Savior. This hymn is a declaration of Jesus’ victory over death and His continued presence among His people. By complex and interlocking allusions to Scripture, it presents a very high view of the Eucharist presence: Jesus is both “Priest and Victim” in this feast. Jesus, having triumphed over sin and death, “robed in flesh” has ascended above all the heavens, entering “within the veil” to the very throne of God. Dix sees in the Eucharist the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to be with us evermore.

We sometimes forget that Jesus ever intercedes for us. The Mount Calvary Magazine in 1910 reminded us:

“The Incarnation is a permanent thing, it still exists. Our Lord still has His work to do in His glorified humanity; and that work is the perpetual intercession which He ever liveth to make for us. In order that he might carry on that work, it was necessary that His humanity should ascend into Heaven; and the way in which he now carries it on, is the unceasing presentation of His living and glorified humanity to the Father.” He is thereby fulfilling His promise that is in the verse painted on the sanctuary arch.

1 Alleluia! sing to Jesus!
His the sceptre, His the throne;
Alleluia! His the triumph,
His the victory alone:
Hark! the songs of peaceful Sion
Thunder like a mighty flood;
Jesus, out of every nation
Hath redeemed us by His blood.

2 Alleluia! not as orphans
Are we left in sorrow now;
Alleluia! He is near us,
Faith believes, nor questions how:
Though the cloud from sight received Him,
When the forty days were o’er:
Shall our hearts forget His promise,
“I am with you evermore”?

3 Alleluia! Bread of Heaven,
Thou on earth our Food, our Stay!
Alleluia! here the sinful
Flee to thee from day to day:
Intercessor, Friend of sinners,
Earth’s Redeemer, plead for me,
Where the songs of all the sinless
Sweep across the crystal sea.

4 Alleluia! King eternal,
Thee the Lord of lords we own;
Alleluia! born or Mary,
Earth Thy footstool, heaven Thy throne:
Thou within the veil hast entered,
Robed in flesh, our great High-Priest;
Thou on earth both Priest and Victim
In the Eucharistic feast.

5 Alleluia! sing to Jesus!
His the sceptre, His the throne;
Alleluia! His the triumph,
His the victory alone;
Hark! the songs of holy Sion
Thunder like a mighty flood;
Jesus, out of every nation
Hath redeemed us by His blood.

Here is the hymn at St. Bartholomew’s.

William Chatterton Dix

William Chatterton Dix (1837 – 1898) was an English writer of hymns and carols. He was born in Bristol, the son of John Dix, a local surgeon. His father gave him his middle name in honour of Thomas Chatterton, a poet about whom he had written a biography. He was educated at the Grammar School, Bristol, for a mercantile career, and became manager of a maritime insurance company in Glasgow where he spent most of his life.

At the age of 29 he was struck with a near fatal illness and consequently suffered months confined to his bed. During this time he became severely depressed. Yet it is from this period that many of his hymns date. He died at Cheddar, Somerset, England.

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Anthems

A new commandment, Thomas Tallis

A new commandment give I unto you, saith the Lord, that ye love together, as I have loved you, that even so ye love one another. By this shall every man know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Here are three voices.

Little is known about Thomas Tallis’s early life, but there seems to be agreement that he was born in the early 16th century, toward the close of the reign of Henry VII. Little is also known about Tallis’s childhood and his significance with music at that age. However, there are suggestions that he was a Child (boy chorister) of the Chapel Royal, St. James’ Palace, the same singing establishment which he later joined as a Gentleman. His first known musical appointment was in 1532, as organist of Dover Priory (now Dover College), a Benedictine priory in Kent. His career took him to London, then (probably in the autumn of 1538) to Waltham Abbey, a large Augustinian monastery in Essex which was dissolved in 1540. Tallis was paid off and also acquired a volume and preserved it; one of the treatises in it, by Leonel Power, prohibits consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves.

Tallis’s next post was at Canterbury Cathedral. He was next sent to Court as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1543 (which later became a Protestant establishment), where he composed and performed for Henry VIII,[9] Edward VI (1547–1553), Queen Mary (1553–1558), and Queen Elizabeth I (1558 until Tallis died in 1585). Throughout his service to successive monarchs as organist and composer, Tallis avoided the religious controversies that raged around him, though, like William Byrd, he stayed an “unreformed Roman Catholic.” Tallis was capable of switching the style of his compositions to suit the different monarchs’ vastly different demands. Among other important composers of the time, including Christopher Tye and Robert White, Tallis stood out. Walker observes, “He had more versatility of style than either, and his general handling of his material was more consistently easy and certain.” Tallis was also a teacher, not only of William Byrd, but also of Elway Bevin, an organist of Bristol Cathedral, and Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

Tallis married around 1552; his wife, Joan, outlived him by four years. They apparently had no children. Late in his life he lived in Greenwich, possibly close to the royal palace: a local tradition holds that he lived on Stockwell Street.

Queen Mary granted Tallis a lease on a manor in Kent that provided a comfortable annual income. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth granted to him and William Byrd a 21-year monopoly for polyphonic music and a patent to print and publish music, which was one of the first arrangements of that type in the country. Tallis’s monopoly covered ‘set songe or songes in parts’, and he composed in English, Latin, French, Italian, or other tongues as long as they served for music in the Church or chamber. Tallis had exclusive rights to print any music, in any language. He and William Byrd were the only ones allowed to use the paper that was used in printing music. Tallis and Byrd used their monopoly to produce Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur in 1575, but the collection did not sell well and they appealed to Queen Elizabeth for her support. People were naturally wary of their new publications, and it certainly did not help their case that they were both avowed Roman Catholics. Not only that, they were strictly forbidden to sell any imported music. “We straightly by the same forbid…to be brought out of any forren Realmes…any songe or songes made and printed in any foreen countrie.” Also, Byrd and Tallis were not given “the rights to music type fonts, printing patents were not under their command, and they didn’t actually own a printing press.”

Tallis retained respect during a succession of opposing religious movements and deflected the violence that claimed Catholics and Protestants alike. He died peacefully in his house in Greenwich in November 1585.

Regina coeli, laetare, Charpentier

Here is the motet.

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Common

Missa S. Maria Magdelena, Healey Willan

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Postlude

Fantasy on Hyfrydol, Henry Coleman

Richard Henry Pinwill Coleman was born on 3 April 1888 in Dartmouth. He was a chorister in St George’s Church, Ramsgate before going to Denstone College.

He studied organ under Sydney Nicholson at Carlisle Cathedral and Manchester Cathedral.

The Good Shepherd, Louis Cranach the Younger

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Acenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Easter IV

April 22, 2018

_______________

Prelude

Erschienen ist der herrliche Tag, J. S. Bach

Hymns

The King of love my shepherd is (ST COLUMBA)

Be joyful, Mary, heavenly Queen (REGINA COELI)

I know that my Redeemer lives (DUKE ST)

Anthems

My shepherd will supply my need, arr. Mack Wilberg

Ego sum pastor bonus, Giovanni Bonaventura Matucci (1712-1777)

Common

Missa S. Maria Magdelena, Healey Willan

Postlude

Christ ist erstanden, J. S. Bach

________________________________

Hymns

The King of love my shepherd is (ST COLUMBA)

Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877) recast George Herbert’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 into this hymn, The King of love my shepherd is.  Baker gives Psalm 23 an explicit Christological and sacramental cast. “The streams of living water” flow from Jesus’ pierced side. He ransoms our soul from the captivity of sin, and feeds with food celestial, “the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die” On our own we never keep to the righteous paths. That is why Jesus comes in love to us, sinners as we are. In his persistent and tender mercy Jesus seeks us, when, “perverse and foolish,” we stray from Him. The wood of the shepherd’s staff is the wood of the cross that guides the strayed soul. Delights flow from Jesus’ pure chalice. The “wine that gladdens the heart” is the Eucharist, the blood of Christ; His is the chalice that overbrims with love. In the Old Testament, our ancestors in faith longed to dwell in the “house of the Lord,” before the revelation of eternal life was clear. But now Christ fulfills that mysterious longing. He is the Good Shepherd, who “giveth his life for the sheep,” the ultimate gift, eternal life with Him. (Thanks to Tony Esolen)

Here is a Reformed analysis of the hymn:

“We note immediately that the usual way of naming God (“the Lord”) has been replaced with a nonbiblical yet immediately comprehensible allegorical title, “the King of Love.”  This unfamiliar opening and the inversion in the first line (“my shepherd is”) prepare the singer for a text that is intentionally—even self-consciously—allusive and aesthetic. This perception of the text is reinforced by the archaic verb forms (“leadeth,” “feedeth”) and the Latinate diction (“verdant,” “celestial”) in the second stanza. The third stanza intensifies the Christological overtones of this paraphrase with allusions not only to the Good Shepherd passage noted earlier but also to Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:4-7; cf. Matthew 18:12-14). The fourth stanza follows the biblical shift from third person to second person, but adds to the images of the shepherd’s rod and staff the suggestion of a processional cross familiar to many nineteen-century Anglican congregations. There is a similar churchy slant in the fifth stanza, where the psalter’s “oil” takes on sacramental tones by being called “unction,” and the usual English translation “cup” becomes a comparably Latinate and ecclesiastical “chalice.” As a result, the reference to God’s “house” in the final line of the sixth stanza does not suggest the Temple in Jerusalem so much as it does the church building in which the hymn is being sung.” (ReformedWorship.org)

I doubt that in the last line “Thy house” is simply the church building; heaven is clearly meant and specified by the “forever.” Anglocatholic services are long, but not that long.

1 The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine forever.

2 Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

3 Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

4 In death’s dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

5 Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

6 And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

Here is the Cardiff Festival Choir singing the hymn. Here is John Rutter’s lovely arrangement with harp accompaniment.

Henry Williams Baker

Sir Henry Williams Baker was the eldest son of Admiral Sir Henry Loraine Baker. Henry was born in London, May 27, 1821, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated, B.A. 1844, M.A. 1847. Taking Holy Orders in 1844, he became, in 1851, Vicar of Monkland, Herefordshire. This benefice he held to his death, on Monday, Feb. 12, 1877. He succeeded to the Baronetcy in 1851. His hymns, including metrical litanies and translations, number in the revised edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, 33 in all. The last audible words which lingered on his dying lips were the third stanza of his rendering of the 23rd Psalm, “The King of Love, my Shepherd is:”—

Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

This tender sadness, brightened by a soft calm peace, was an epitome of his poetical life.

The tune is St. Columba. Because the compilers of the 1906 English Hymnal were denied permission to use Dykes’s original tune (see sidebar, below), musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) turned to a folk tune that his former teacher Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had recently edited for a collection of Irish music (A Complete Collection of Irish Music as noted by George Petri (London, 1902-1905); ST. COLUMBA is no. 1043). The two most notable improvements Vaughan Williams made in the hymn tune known as ST. COLUMBA were the lengthening of the second and fourth lines to extend the Common Meter tune to 8787 in order to accommodate Baker’s text—this being their first appearance together—and the use of a triplet (rather than an eighth and two sixteenths) in the sixth measure. (ReformedWorship.org).

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Be joyful, Mary, heavenly Queen

Be joyful Mary, heavenly Queen is a translation of Regina coeli, iubila, an anonymous 17^th century hymn. The tune was written by Johann Leisentritt (1527-1586), and published in his Catholicum Hymnologium Germanicum in 1584. Here is Notre Dame.

The words in the 1901 translation (Psallite: English Catholic Hymns) closely follow the Regina coeli. The words have been modernized in out version. I am searching for the original translation.

1 Be joyful, Mary, heav’nly Queen,
Gaude, Maria!
Your grief is changed to joy serene,
Alleluia! Laetare, O Maria!

2 The Son you bore by heaven’s grace,
Gaude, Maria!
Did by his death our guilt erase,
Alleluia! Laetare, O Maria!
3 The Lord has risen from the dead,
be joyful, Mary!Gaude, Maria!
He rose in glory as he said,
Alleluia! Laetare, O Maria!

4 Then pray to God, O Virgin fair,
be joyful, Mary!Gaude, Maria!
That he our souls to heaven bear,
Alleluia! Laetare, O Maria!

Here is the Notre Dame choir singing it as a recessional.

The Latin original is somewhat different:

Regina coeli jubila, Gaude Maria.
Jam pulsa cedunt nubila.
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

2. Quem digna terris gignere, Gaude Maria.
Vivis resurgit funere.
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

3. Sunt fracta mortis spicula, Gaude Maria.
Jesu jacet mors subdita.
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

4. Acerbitas solatium, Gaude Maria.
Luctus redonat gaudium.
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

5. Turbata sputis lumina, Gaude Maria.
Phoebea vincunt fulgura,
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

6. Manum pedumque vulnera, Gaude Maria.
Sunt gratiarum flumina,
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

7. Transversa ligni robora, Gaude Maria.
Sunt sceptra regni fulgida.
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

8. Lucet arundo purpura, Gaude Maria.
Ut fulva terrae viscera,
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria..

9. Catena, clavi, lancea, Gaude Maria.
Triumphi sunt insignia,
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria..

10. Ergo, Maria, plaudito, Gaude Maria.
Clientibus succurrito,
Alleluia. Laetare o Maria.

Here is Praetorius’s setting.

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I know that my Redeemer lives (DUKE ST)

 I know that my redeemer lives is by the English Baptist Samuel Medley (1738-1799). The hymn uses a simple repetition of “He lives” to celebrate the resurrected Jesus who rules our lives and gives us eternal life. Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!

This is the earliest version I could find (1816):

1 I know that my Redeemer lives,
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, he lives, who once was dead,
He lives, my everlasting Head.

2 He lives, triumphant from the grace,
He lives, eternally to save;
He lives, all-glorious in the sky,
He lives, exulted there on high.

3 He lives to bless me with his love,
He lives to plead for me above,
He lives my hungry soul to feed,
He lives to help in time of need.

4 He lives and grants me rich supply,
He lives to guide me with his eye,
He lives to comfort me when faint,
He lives to hear my soul’s complaint.

5 He lives to crush the pow’rs of hell,
He lives that he may in me dwell,
He lives to heal and make me whole
He lives to guard my feeble soul.

6 He lives to silence all my fears;
He lives to stop and wipe my tears,
He lives to calm my troubled heart,
he lives all blessings to impart.

7 He lives my kind, my heavenly friend,
He lives and loves me to the end;
He lives, and while he lives I’ll sing,
He lives my Prophet, Priest and King.

8 He lives and grants me daily breath,
He lives, and I shall conquer death,
He lives my mansion to prepare,
He lives to bring me safely there.

9 He lives all glory to his name,
He lives, my Jesus still the same;
O the sweet joy this sentence gives,
I know that my Redeemer lives.

Samuel Medley

Samuel Medley came from a devout family but led a dissolute life as a youth and joined the Royal Navy. In 1759 Medley’s ship engaged in a naval battle with a French ship, during which Medley’s leg was severely injured. After the battle, Medley’s leg continued to grow worse, even to the point of having to amputate the leg to save Medley’s life. One evening, the physician aboard the ship told Medley that if his leg did not improve by morning, they would have to amputate or he could face death. During the night, Medley remembered what his grandfather had taught him when he was younger, and he began to pray vigorously that his leg might be spared. The next morning, to the surprise of all on the ship, the physician examined the leg and determined that it had healed so well that amputation was no longer needed. Immediately afterwards, Medley returned to his room, found the bible his grandfather had given him, and began reading. When Medley’s ship returned to England, he was sent to his grandfather’s house to recover. There Medley’s grandfather read a sermon written by Isaac Watts, which moved Medley greatly; he immediately converted and became a Christian. After his conversion, Medley began attending the Baptist Church in Eagle Street, London, then under the care of Dr. Gifford, and shortly afterwards opened a school, which for several years he conducted with great success. Having begun to preach, he received, in 1767, a call to become pastor of the Baptist church at Watford. Thence, in 1772, he removed to Byrom Street, Liverpool, where he gathered a large congregation, and for 27 years was remarkably popular and useful. After a long and painful illness he died July 17, 1799.

First published anonymously in Henry Boyd’s Select Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1793), DUKE STREET was credited to John Hatton (b. Warrington, England, c. 1710; d, St. Helen’s, Lancaster, England, 1793) in William Dixon’s Euphonia (1805). Virtually nothing is known about Hatton, its composer, other than that he lived on Duke Street in St. Helen’s and that his funeral was conducted at the Presbyterian chapel there.

Here is King of Glory Lutheran Church singing it.

DUKE STREET was also used in Charles Ives’ Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day (around 4:00)

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Anthems

My shepherd will supply my need, arr. Mack Wilberg

1. My Shepherd will supply my need; Jehovah is His Name; In pastures fresh He makes me feed Beside the living stream. He brings my wand’ring spirit back When I forsake His ways, And leads me, for His mercy’s sake, In paths of truth and grace. 2. When I walk through the shades of death, Thy presence is my stay; A word of Thy supporting breath Drives all my fears away. Thy hand, in sight of all my foes, Doth still my table spread; My cup with blessings overflows; Thine oil anoints my head. 3. The sure provisions of my God Attend me all my days; O may Thy house be mine abode, And all my work be praise! There would I find a settled rest (While others go and come), No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home.

Here is the Baylor A Capella Choir. Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (a delicate rendition).

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) is rightfully considered the father of English hymnody. Psalm 23 is the best known and best loved of all the psalms. And RESIGNATION, a nineteenth-century tune from southern Appalachia, is one of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies ever composed. All three—poet, psalm, and music—unite in this hymn to give us a new vision of the providence of God.

Isaac Watts, the English Congregational minister, theologian, and writer, was a prolific hymnodist who penned about six hundred sacred songs, forever changing the course of English-language hymnody. Apparently he began writing hymns in his youth, when one day, returning home from church and complaining about the poor quality of the metrical psalms that had been sung at that morning’s worship, he was challenged by his father to “Try… to produce something better.” He did, and Watts’s hymns still appear in every hymnal.

“My Shepherd Will Supply My Need” dates from Watts’s 1719 collection, Psalms of David, and concludes with his remarkable interpretation of the psalm’s last verse: “No more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.”

The tune RESIGNATION, by an unknown composer, first appeared in the 1835 hymnbook Southern Harmony, a collection of church music from the rural American south. The melody is disarmingly simple. Like much folk music, it is entirely pentatonic—that is, it uses only a five-note scale analogous to the black keys on the piano. The formal pattern of the tune is AA-BA; the first, second, and final phrases are identical. And every phrase comes to rest on the tonic, or key-note.

Mack Wilberg (born February 20, 1955 in Price, Utah) is a composer, arranger, conductor, choral clinician and the current music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He was the associate director of the choir and music director of the Temple Square Chorale for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from May 1999 until his appointment as director on March 28, 2008.

Wilberg was raised in Castle Dale, Utah, and served an LDS mission in South Korea where he was part of New Horizons, a vocal group made up of LDS missionaries. Wilberg attended Brigham Young University (BYU) after finishing his missionary service, and earned a bachelor’s degree in music in 1979. He concentrated on piano and composition. He then earned a master’s degree and a PhD in music from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.

He is a former professor of music at BYU, where he directed the Men’s Chorus and Concert Choir. At BYU he was a member of the American Piano Quartet which included Paul Pollei, himself, and different other pianists at different times (Massimiliano Frani, Robin Hancock, Del Parkinson, Ronald Staheli, and Douglas Humphreys).

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Ego sum pastor bonus, Giovanni Bonaventura Matucci (1712-1777)

Ego sum pastor bonus qui animam meam pono pro ovibus meis.

I am the good shepherd who offers my life for my sheep.

Giovanni Bonaventura Matucci (1712-1777) was a pupil of Francesco Feroci. He began assisting his teacher at the Florence Cathedral in 1744, and succeeded him after his death in 1757.

They recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread

Blessed Sacrament Chapel, St Matthew’s Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Acenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Easter III

April 15, 2018

Prelude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Johann Kaspar Ferdinand Fischer

Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing (SALZBURG)

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless (ST AGNES)

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness (SCHMÜCKE DICH)

Anthems

Surrexit pastor bonus,  Tomás Luis de Victoria

Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli, William Byrd

Postlude

Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr, Johann Gottfried Walther

Prelude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Johann Kaspar Ferdinand Fischer

Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer  (c.1656 – August 27, 1746) was a German Baroque composer. Much of Fischer’s music shows the influence of the French Baroque style, exemplified by Jean Baptiste Lully, and he was responsible for bringing the French influence to German music.

Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing (SALZBURG)

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing is a translation by the Robert Campbell (1814-1868) of the seventh century Latin hymn, Ad regias agni dapes, which was sung by the newly baptized at Easter when they were first admitted to communion. Our victorious King through His death and resurrection has caused the angel of death to pass over us. We are redeemed by His blood, which opens Paradise to us where we will live forever.  The LORD brought Israel out of Egypt through the sea into the promised land by the blood of the Lamb. Jesus through His death brings us through the wilderness of this life by feeding us with Himself, the true manna that comes down from heaven.

1 At the Lamb’s high feast we sing
praise to our victorious King,
who hath washed us in the tide
flowing from his piercèd side;
praise we him, whose love divine
gives his sacred blood for wine,
gives his body for the feast,
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.
2 Where the Paschal blood is poured,
death’s dark angel sheathes his sword;
Israel’s hosts triumphant go
through the wave that drowns the foe.
Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed,
Paschal victim, Paschal bread;
with sincerity and love
eat we manna from above.
3 Mighty victim from the sky,
hell’s fierce powers beneath thee lie;
thou hast conquered in the fight,
thou hast brought us life and light.
Now no more can death appal,
now no more the grave enthral:
thou hast opened paradise,
and in thee thy saints shall rise.
4 Easter triumph, Easter joy,
sin alone can this destroy;
from sin’s power do thou set free
souls new-born, O Lord, in thee.
Hymns of glory and of praise,
risen Lord, to thee we raise;
holy Father, praise to thee,
with the Spirit, ever be.

Raised a Presbyterian, the Edinburgh advocate Robert Campbell joined the Episcopal Church of Scotland. While he was a Scottish Episcopalian (imagine!), he translated this hymn in 1850 and other Latin hymns for relaxation. In 1852, he joined the Roman Catholic Church. Much of his life, both as a Protestant and a Catholic was dedicated to the education of Edinburgh’s poorest children. He authored a report, Past and present treatment of Roman Catholic children in Scotland, by the Board of Supervision for Relief of the Poor (1863).

The hymn Ad regias Agni dapes has a checkered history. It was originally Ad coenam Agni providi a sixth-century Ambrosian hymn, that is, a hymn composed in iambic tetrameter, after the model of the hymns that St. Ambrose had composed after the model of Roman marching songs. This meter is close to the meter of rythm prose and is also easily adopted to music. The hymn was composed when Latin was still a spoken language. For example, it treats stolis albis candidi [bright with white garments] as if it were istolis albis candidi (eight syllables): ist– is how they pronounced st– in the ‘Vulgar Latin’ period. I presume that the Spanish habit of adding a syllable before an s comes form this: Estarbucks. The hymn also used words from Christian Latin, such as coena, the word used for the Last Supper.

1. Ad coenam Agni providi,
   stolis salutis candidi,
   post transitum maris Rubri
   Christo canamus principi.
2. Cuius corpus sanctissimum
   in ara crucis torridum,
   sed et cruorem roseum
   gustando, Dei vivimus.
3.  Protecti paschae vespero
   a devastante angelo,
   de Pharaonis aspero
   sumus erepti imperio.
4.  Iam pascha nostrum Christus est,
   agnus occisus innocens;
   sinceritatis azyma
   qui carnem suam obtulit.
5. O vera, digna hostia,
   per quam franguntur tartara,
   captiva plebs redimitur,
   redduntur vitae praemia!
6. Consurgit Christus tumulo,
   victor redit de barathro,
   tyrannum trudens vinculo
   et paradisum reserans.
7. Esto perenne mentibus
   paschale, Iesu, gaudium
   et nos renatos gratine
   tuis triumphis aggrega.
8.  Iesu, tibi sit gloria,
   qui morte victa praenites,
   cum Patre et almo Spiritu,
   in sempiterna saecula. Amen.

Here is John Mason Neale’s translation:

1. The Lamb’s high banquet we await
   in snow-white robes of royal state:
   and now, the Red Sea’s channel past,
   to Christ our Prince we sing at last.
2. Upon the Altar of the Cross
   His Body hath redeemed our loss:
   and tasting of his roseate Blood,
   our life is hid with Him in God,
3. That Paschal Eve God’s arm was bared,
   the devastating Angel spared:
   by strength of hand our hosts went free
   from Pharaoh’s ruthless tyranny.
4. Now Christ, our Paschal Lamb, is slain,
   the Lamb of God that knows no stain,
   the true Oblation offered here,
   our own unleavened Bread sincere.
5. O Thou, from whom hell’s monarch flies,
   O great, O very Sacrifice,
   Thy captive people are set free,
   and endless life restored in Thee.’
6.  For Christ, arising from the dead,
   from conquered hell victorious sped,
   and thrust the tyrant down to chains,
   and Paradise for man regains.
7. We pray Thee, King with glory decked,
   in this our Paschal joy, protect
   from all that death would fain effect
   Thy ransomed flock, Thine own elect.
8. To Thee who, dead, again dost live,
   all glory Lord, Thy people give;
   all glory, as is ever meet,
   to Father and to Paraclete. Amen.

And so the hymn was sung for a thousand years.

Urban VIII, by Pietro da Cortona (1627)

And then came the Renaissance and Maffeo Barbarini was elected to the papal throne as Urban VIII (reigned 1623-1644). The new liturgical books of Pius V had just been approved, but Urban found the Latin tasteless and inelegant and barbarous. So he and his assistants “improved” the ancient hymns. As one annoyed hymnologist writes: “Ambrose and Prudentius took something classical and made it Christian; the revisers and their imitators took something Christian and tried to make it classical. The result may be pedantry, and sometimes perhaps poetry; but it is not piety.”

So Ad cenam Agni providi in 1632 became Ad regias Agni dapes, the version translated by Campbell.  This hymn us used at Vespers from Easter Sunday until Ascension. Notice I say used, because the classicized hymns were not untended to be sung, but recited privately.

Ad regias Agni dapes,
Stolis amicti candidis,
Post transitum maris Rubri,
Christo canamus Principi.

2. Divina cuius caritas
Sacrum propinat sanguinem,
Almique membra corporis
Amor sacerdos immolat.

3. Sparsum cruorem postibus
Vastator horret Angelus:
Fugitque divisum mare,
Merguntur hostes fluctibus.

4. Iam Pascha nostrum Christus est,
Paschalis idem victima:
Et pura puris mentibus
Sinceritatis azyma.

5. O vera caeli víctima,
Subiecta cui sunt tartara,
Soluta mortis vincula,
Recepta vitæ praemia.

6. Victor subactis inferis,
Trophaea Christus explicat,
Caeloque aperto, subditum
Regem tenebrarum trahit.

7. Ut sis perenne mentibus
Paschale Iesu gaudium,
A morte dira criminum
Vitæ renatos libera.

8. Deo Patri sit gloria,
Et Filio, qui a mortuis
Surrexit, ac Paraclito,
In sempiterna saecula. Amen.

Dapes, a classical poetic word, is substituted for the Christian coena, obscuring the reference to the Last Supper and to the Eucharist. The original reference to the roasted (torridum) body of Christ , was eliminated, and Victorian commentators, although they understood the reference to the Paschal Lamb, found the image horrifying.

The Benedictines and the Dominicans would have nothing to do with such innovations, and continued to use the original version of the hymn. Their attitude was Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini.

Ad regias agni dapes is mentioned in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Here is the context:

Pater patruum cum filiabus familiarum. Or, but, now, and, ariring out of her mirgery margery watersheads and, to change that subjunct from the traumaturgid for once in a while and darting back to stuff, if so be you may identify yourself with the him in you, that fluctuous neck merchamtur, bloodfadder and milkmudder, since then our too many of her, Abha na Lifé, and getting on to dadaddy again, as them we’re ne’er free of, was he in tea e’er he went on the bier or didn’t he ontime do something seemly heavy in sugar? He sent out Christy Columb and he came back with a jailbird’s unbespokables in his beak and then he sent out Le Caron Crow and the peacies are still looking for him. The seeker from the swayed, the beesabouties from the parent swarm. Speak to the right! Rotacist ca canny! He caun ne’er be bothered but maun e’er be waked. If there is a future in every past that is present Quis est qui non novit quinnigan and Qui quae quot at Quinnigan’s Quake! Stump! His producers are they not his consumers? Your exagmination round his factification for incamination of a warping process. Declaim!

—Arra irrara hirrara man, weren’t they arriving in clansdestinies for the Imbandiment of Ad Regias Agni Dapes, fogabawlers and panhibernskers, after the crack and the lean years, scalpjaggers and houthhunters, like the messicals of the great god, a scarlet trainful, the Twoedged Petrard, totalling, leggats and prelaps, in their aggregate ages two and thirty plus undecimmed centries of them with insiders, extraomnes and tuttifrutties allcunct, from Rathgar, Rathanga, Rountown and Rush, from America Avenue and Asia Place and the Affrian Way and Europa Parade and besogar the wallies of Noo Soch Wilds and from Vico, Mespil Rock and Sorrento, for the lure of his weal and the fear of his oppidumic, to his salon de espera in the keel of his kraal, like lodes of ores flocking fast to Mount Maximagnetic, afeerd he was a gunner but affaird to stay away, Merrionites, Dumstdumbdrummers, Luccanicans, Ashtoumers, Batterysby Parkes and Krumlin Boyards, Phillipsburgs, Cabraists and Finglossies, Ballymunites, Raheniacs and the bettlers of Clontarf, for to contemplate in manifest and pay their firstrate duties before the both of him, twelve stone a side, with their Thieve le Roué! and their Shvr yr Thrst! and their Uisgye ad Inferos! and their Usque ad Ebbraios! at and in the licensed boosiness primises of his delhightful bazar and reunited magazine hall, by the magazine wall.

Completely clear, I hope.

A helpful commentary explains:

The tune is SALZBURG,  by Jakob Hintze (1622-1702),who in 1666 became court musician to the Elector of Brandenburg at Berlin; but he retired to his birthplace in 1695, and died at Berlin with the reputation of being an excellent contrapuntist.

Here is At the Lamb’s high feast sung at at the most appropriate occasion: Communion at Easter.

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless (ST AGNES)

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless was written by the Moravian James Montgomery (1771—1854). As at the supper at Emmaus, Jesus feeds us. As the Good Shepherd, He lays down his life for His sheep, giving them His body and blood as their sustenance so that they may live forever. We know Jesus especially in the breaking of the bread, the action that symbolizes His death by which He sacrifices Himself for us and gives Himself to us.

The hymn is a tissue of Biblical references: we are God’s ”chosen,”  the elect, his flock. The Eucharist is “manna in the wilderness” and “water from the rock,” the one that Moses struck and was a type of Christ (I Cor 10:4). The second stanza continues he metaphor of pilgrimage; on earth we are but strangers and travelers (Heb 11:13); the Eucharistic body of the Lord, like the manna in the desert, gives us strength to reach our true home, the Promised Land, where we will abide forever. Like the disciples at Emmaus, we recognize the Lord in the “breaking bread,” (Lk 24:35); we pray that he will not vanish, but spread his table in our hearts and sup with us (Rev 3:20).

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless
Thy chosen pilgrim flock,
With manna in the wilderness,
With water from the rock.

We would not live by bread alone,
But by that word of grace,
In strength of which we travel on
To our abiding-place.

Be known to us in breaking bread,
But do not then depart,
Saviour, abide with us, and spread
Thy table in our heart.

There sup with us in love divine;
Thy body and Thy blood,
That living bread, that heavenly wine,
Be our immortal food.

Here is Trinity Church singing it.

James Montgomery

James Montgomery (1771-1854) was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, on the western coast of Scotland. He was the son of John Montgomery, the only Moravian pastor in Scotland. The British Moravian church traces its roots back to the Moravian Missionary center in Hernnhut, Germany (Moravians were also known as Hernnhuters or the Bohemian Brethren).

John and his wife felt God’s call to be missionaries to the island of Barbados, in the West Indies. Tearfully, they placed six-year old James in a Moravian settlement at Gracehill in Central Ireland. That was to be the last time James would see them. They died within a year of each other after reaching Barbados.

Left with nothing, James was sent to be trained for the ministry at the Moravian School at Fulneck, near Leeds, England. It was here that he first started writing verse, at the age of 10. At Fulneck, secular studies were banned, but James nevertheless found means of borrowing and reading a good deal of poetry, including Burns’ “Lines To A Mountain Daisy.” He made ambitious plans to write epics of his own.

He suffered periods of deep depression as a result of losing his parents at such an early age. The Moravians who were trying to care for the orphan found him to be a dreamer, who “never had a sense of the hour.” Failing school at the age of 14, they “put him out to business” to a baker in Mirfield, just seven miles to the south. James left on his own and hired himself out to a storekeeper at Wath-upon-Dearne, another thirty miles to the south. Not finding much to his liking, James ran away again, wondering from place to place, trying to sell his freshly written verses. After further adventures, including an unsuccessful attempt to launch himself into a literary career in London, he moved to Sheffield in 1792 to become assistant to Joseph Gales, auctioneer, bookseller and printer of the Sheffield Register. In 1794, Gales left England to avoid political prosecution and Montgomery took the paper in hand, changing its name to the Sheffield Iris. Now owning the paper, he was able to publish his writings as he pleased.

These were times of political repression and he was twice imprisoned on charges of sedition. The first time was in 1795 for printing a poem celebrating the fall of the Bastille; the second in 1796 was for criticizing a magistrate for forcibly dispersing a political protest in Sheffield. His later account of this episode was published in 1840. Turning the experience to some profit, in 1797 he published a pamphlet of poems written during his captivity, as Prison Amusements. For some time, the Iris was the only newspaper in Sheffield; but beyond the ability to produce fairly creditable articles from week to week, Montgomery was devoid of the journalistic faculties which would have enabled him to take advantage of his position. Other newspapers arose to fill the place which his might have occupied and in 1825 he sold it on to a local bookseller, John Blackwell.

In his youth, he had strayed from the church, but at his own request he was readmitted into the Moravian congregation at Fulneck when forty-three years of age. He expressed his feelings at the time in the following lines

People of the living God,
I have sought the world around,
Paths of sin and sorrow trod,
Peace and comfort nowhere found.
Now to you my spirit turns–
Turns a fugitive unblest;
Brethren, where your altar burns,
O receive me into rest.

Thereafter he became an avid worker for missions and an active member of the Bible Society. He was interested in social issues and the missions. He attacked attacking the lottery (then, as now, a way of extracting money from the desperate poor) in Thoughts on Wheels (1817) and taking up the cause of the chimney sweeps’ apprentices in The Climbing Boys’ Soliloquies. His next major poem was Greenland (1819), a poem in five cantos of heroic couplets. This was prefaced by a description of the ancient Moravian church, its eighteenth-century revival and mission to Greenland in 1733.

In addition to Shepherd of souls (1940 Hymnal, #213), his hymns Angels from the realms of glory (1940 Hymnal, #28) and Hail to the Lord’s Anointed (1940 Hymnal, #545) are still sung.

In 1861, a monument designed by John Bell (1811–1895) was erected over his grave in the Sheffield cemetery at a cost of £1000, raised by public subscription on the initiative of the Sheffield Sunday School Union, of which he was among the founding members. On its granite pedestal is inscribed: “Here lies interred, beloved by all who knew him, the Christian poet, patriot, and philanthropist. Wherever poetry is read, or Christian hymns sung, in the English language, ‘he being dead, yet speaketh’ by the genius, piety and taste embodied in his writings.” There are also extracts from his poems “Prayer” and “The Grave”. After it fell into disrepair the statue was moved to the precinct of Sheffield Cathedral in 1971, where there is also a memorial window.

Elsewhere in Sheffield there are various streets named after Montgomery and a Grade II-listed drinking fountain on Broad Lane. The meeting hall of the Sunday Schools Union (now known as The Montgomery), in Surrey Street, was named in his honour in 1886; it houses a 420-seat theater which also bears his name. Elsewhere, Wath-upon-Dearne, flattered by being called “the queen of villages” in his work, has repaid the compliment by naming after him a community hall, a street and a square. His birthplace in Irvine was renamed ‘Montgomery House’ after he paid the town a return visit in 1841 but has since been demolished. Sic transit.

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness (SCHMÜCKE DICH)

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness. The original German text, Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, was written by the German politician and poet Johann Franck (1618—1677) in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. It expresses an intimate relationship between the individual believer and his Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus, ascended into heaven, is still present as our food in this “wondrous banquet.” He is the fount, from whom our being flows as we receive Him and are filled with Him. He feeds us and transforms us into His likeness so that we become His joy and boast and glory before the heavenly court.

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
leave the gloomy haunts of sadness;
come into the daylight’s splendour,
there with joy thy praises render
unto him whose grace unbounded
hath this wondrous banquet founded:
high o’er all the heavens he reigneth,
yet to dwell with thee he deigneth.

Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
light, who dost my soul enlighten,
joy, the sweetest heart e’er knoweth,
fount, whence all my being floweth,
at thy feet I cry, my Maker,
let me be a fit partaker
of this blessed food from heaven,
for our good, thy glory, given.

Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
let me gladly here obey thee;
never to my hurt invited,
be thy love with love requited:
from this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
through the gifts thou here dost give me,
as thy guest in heaven receive me.

Here is the Schola Cantorum of St. Peters-in-the-Loop singing the hymn. Here is the Hastings Choir.

Here is the 1674 text.

1. Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele!
Laß die dunckle Sünden Höle!
Komm ans helle Licht gegangen;
Fange herrlich an zu prangen.
Denn der Herr voll Heyl und Gnaden,
Wil dich itzt zu Gaste laden,
Der den Himmel kan verwalten,
Wil itzt Herberg’ in dir halten.

2. Eile, wie Verlobten pflegen,
Deinem Bräutigam entgegen,
Der da mit dem Gnaden-Hammer
Klopfft an deine Hertzens-Kammer.
Oeffn’ ihm bald die Geistes-Pforten:
Red ihn an mit schönen Worten:
Komm, mein Liebster, laß dich küssen!
Laß mich deiner nicht mehr missen.

3. Zwar in Kauffung theurer Wahren
Pflegt man sonst kein Geld zu sparen:
Aber du wilt für die Gaben
Deiner Huld kein Geld nicht haben:
Weil in allen Bergwercks-Gründen
Kein solch Kleinod ist zu finden,
Daß die Blut-gefüllte Schaalen
Und dis Manna kan bezahlen.

4. Ach! wie hungert mein Gemüthe,
Menschen-Freund, nach deiner Güte!
Ach! wie pfleg’ ich offt, mit Thränen,
Mich nach de  iner Kost zu sehnen!
Ach! wie pfleget mich zu dürsten,
Nach dem Tranck des Lebens-Fürsten!
Wünsche stets daß mein Gebeine
Sich durch Gott mit Gott vereine.

5. Beydes Lachen und auch Zittern
Lässet sich in mir itzt wittern:
Das Geheinmiß dieser Speise,
Und die unerforschte Weise,
Machet daß ich früh vermercke,
Herr, die Grösse deiner Stärcke!
Ist auch wohl ein Mensch zu finden
Der dein’ Allmacht solt ergründen?

6. Nein! Vernunfft die muß hier weichen,
Kan dieß Wunder nicht erreichen:
Daß diß Brodt nie wird verzehret,
Ob es gleich viel tausend nehret;
Und daß mit dem Safft der Reben
Uns wird Christi Blut gegeben.
O der grossen Heimligkeiten
Die nur Gottes Geist kan deuten!

7. Jesu, meine Lebens-Sonne!
Jesu, meine Freud’ und Wonne!
Jesu, du mein gantz Beginnen,
Lebens-Quell und Licht der Sinnen!
Hier fall ich zu deinen Füssen!
Laß mich würdiglich gemessen
Dieser deiner Himmels-Speise,
Mir zum Heyl, und dir zum Preise!

8. Herr, es hat dein treues Lieben
Dich vom Himmel abgetrieben,
Daß du willig hast dein Leben
In den Tod für uns gegeben,
Und darzu gantz unverdrossen,
Herr, dein Blut für uns vergossen,
Das uns itzt kan kräfftig träncken,
Deiner Liebe zu gedencken!

9. Jesu wahres Brodt des Lebens!
Hilff, daß ich doch nicht vergebens,
Oder mir vielleicht zum Schaden
Sey zu deinem Tisch geladen!
Laß mich durch diß Seelen-Essen
Deine Liebe recht ermessen,
Daß ich auch, wie itzt auf Erden,
Mag dein Gast im Himmel.

The erotic imagery in the German was eliminated by Catherine Winkworth when she translated the hymn for her Lyra Germanica.

The original 1674 German text was written by

Johann Franck 

Johann Franck (1618-1677. He was German poet, lawyer and public official. After his father’s death in 1620, Franck’s uncle by marriage, the town judge, Adam Tielckau, adopted him and sent him to schools in Guben, Cottbus, Stettin, and Thorn. On June 28, 1638, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg to study jurisprudence. This was the only German university left undisturbed by the Thirty Years’ War. Here his religious spirit, his love of nature, and his friendship with such men as the his poetic mentor, Simon Dach and Heinrich Held, preserved him from sharing in the excesses of his fellow students.

Johann Franck returned to Guben at Easter 1640, at his mother’s urgent request; she wished to have him near her in those times of war when Guben frequently suffered from the presence of both Swedish and Saxon troops. After his return from Prague, in May 1645, Franck embarked on a distinguished civic career as attorney, city councillor (1648) and Burgermeister (Mayor) (1661), and in 1671 (or 1670) was appointed as county elder of Guben in the margravate (Landtag – Diet)) of Lower Lusatia.

Johann Franck wrote both secular and religious poetry and published his first work, Hundertönige Vaterunsersharfe, at Guben in 1646. Almost his entire output is brought together in the two-volume Teutsche Gedichte. The first part, Geistliches Sion (Guben, 1672), contains 110 religious songs, provided with some 80 melodies. Bach composed 14 settings of seven of his texts, the most famous being the motet Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227.

Johann Crüger

The chorale melody associated with this text was composed by the German Lutheran theologian and musician, Johann Crüger (1598-1662).  After passing through the schools at Guben, Sorau and Breslau, the Jesuit College at Olmütz, and the Poets’ school at Regensburg, he made a tour in Austria, and, in 1615, settled at Berlin. There, save for a short residence at the University of Wittenberg, in 1620, he employed himself as a private tutor till 1622. In 1622 he was appointed Cantor of St. Nicholas’s Church at Berlin, and also one of the masters of the Greyfriars Gymnasium. He died at Berlin Feb. 23, 1662. Crüger wrote no hymns, although in some American hymnals he appears as “Johann Krüger, 1610,” as the author of the supposed original of C. Wesley’s “Hearts of stone relent, relent”. He was one of the most distinguished musicians of his time. Of his hymn tunes, some 20 are still in use, the best known probably being that to “Nun danket alle Gott”, which is set to No. 379 in Hymns Ancient & Modern.

Anthems

Surrexit pastor bonus,  Tomás Luis de Victoria

Surrexit pastor bonus qui animam suam posuit pro ovibus suis, et pro grege suo mori dignatus est, alleluia.

The good shepherd has arisen, who laid down his life for his sheep, and for his flock deigned to die, alleluia.

At La Grande Chapelle.

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Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli, William Byrd

Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr, Johann Gottfried Walther

Ronald IJmker (yes, that is how it is spelled) plays in the Hervormde Kerk in Coevorden.

Johann Gottfried Walther

Johann Gottfried Walther (18 September 1684 – 23 March 1748) was a German music theorist, organist, composer, and lexicographer of the Baroque era.

Walther was born at Erfurt. Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that of Johann Sebastian Bach, he was the famous composer’s cousin.

Walther was most well known as the compiler of the Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), an enormous dictionary of music and musicians. Not only was it the first dictionary of musical terms written in the German language, it was the first to contain both terms and biographical information about composers and performers up to the early 18th century. In all, the Musicalisches Lexicon defines more than 3,000 musical terms; Walther evidently drew on more than 250 separate sources in compiling it, including theoretical treatises of the early Baroque and Renaissance. The single most important source for the work was the writings of Johann Mattheson, who is referenced more than 200 times.

Some further information on Walther can be found in the book Musica Poetica by Dietrich Bartel.  Bartel quotes Walther’s definition of musica poetica, or musical rhetoric, as:

“Musica Poetica or musical composition is a mathematical science through which an agreeable and correct harmony of the notes is brought to paper in order that it might later be sung or played, thereby appropriately moving the listeners to Godly devotion as well as to please and delight both mind and soul…. It is so called because the composer must not only understand language as does the poet in order not to violate the meter of the text but because he also writes poetry, namely a melody, thus deserving the title Melopoeta or Melopoeus.”

Walther was the music teacher of Prince Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar. He wrote a handbook for the young prince with the title Praecepta der musicalischen Composition, 1708. It remained handwritten until Peter Benary’s edition (Leipzig, 1955). As an organ composer, Walther became famous for his organ transcriptions of orchestral concertos by contemporary Italian and German masters. He made 14 transcriptions of concertos by Albinoni, Gentili, Taglietti, Giuseppe Torelli, Vivaldi and Telemann. These works were the models for Bach to write his famous transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi and others. On the other hand, Walther as a city organist of Weimar wrote exactly 132 organ preludes based on Lutheran chorale melodies. Some free keyboard music also belongs to his legacy.

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

A Roman Catholic Parish

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Thomas Sunday

Dominica in albis

Divine Mercy Sunday

April 8, 2018

Hymns

O sons and daughters, let us sing (O FILII ET FILIAE)

That Easter day with joy was bright (PUER NOBIS)

How oft, O Lord, Thy face hath shone (DUKE STREET)

Anthems

Quia vidisti me, Luca Marenzio (1556-1599)

Quia vidisti me, Palestrina (1525-1594)

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Healy Willan

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HYMNS

O sons and daughters is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) of the hymn O filii et filiae, attributed to the Franciscan Jean Tisserand (died 1494). The hymn appeared in an untitled book, published in France between 1518 and 1536, with the heading ‘L’aleluya du jour des Pasques’. It was used to salute the Blessed Sacrament on the evening of Easter Day.  It recounts the appearance of the Risen Christ to both the women on Easter and to the disciples in the upper room. We are addressed in the stanza How blest are they who have not seen / And yet whose faith has constant been, / For they eternal life shall win. Although we have not seen the Risen Lord with our bodily eyes, we see Him with the eyes of faith, especially in the Eucharist, and are loyal to Him.

O sons and daughters, let us sing!
The King of heaven, the glorious King,
O’er death today rose triumphing.
That Easter morn, at break of day,
The faithful women went their way
To seek the tomb where Jesus lay.

An angel clad in white they see,
Who sat, and spake unto the three,
“Your Lord doth go to Galilee.”

That night the apostles met in fear;
Amidst them came their Lord most dear,
And said, “My peace be on all here.”

When Thomas first the tidings heard,
How they had seen the risen Lord,
He doubted the disciples’ word.

“My pierced hands, O Thomas, see;
My hands, my feet, I show to thee;
Not faithless, but believing be.”

No longer Thomas then denied,
He saw the feet, the hands, the side;
“Thou art my Lord and God,” he cried.

How blest are they who have not seen,
And yet whose faith has constant been,
For they eternal life shall win.

On this most holy day of days,
To God your hearts and voices raise,
In laud, and jubilee, and praise. Alleluia!

Here is the choir of King’s College, Cambridge.

The Latin original with stanzas added to it as various times:

1. O filii et filiae,
Rex caelestis, Rex gloriae,
morte surrexit hodie, alleluia.

2. Et mane prima sabbati,
ad ostium monumenti
accesserunt discipuli, alleluia.

3. Et Maria Magdalene,
et Jacobi, et Salome,
venerunt corpus ungere, alleluia.

4. In albis sedens Angelus,
praedixit mulieribus:
in Galilaea est Dominus, alleluia.

5. Et Joannes Apostolus
cucurrit Petro citius,
monumento venit prius, alleluia.

6. Discipulis adstantibus,
in medio stetit Christus,
dicens: Pax vobis omnibus, alleluia.

7. Ut intellexit Didymus,
quia surrexerat Jesus,
remansit fere dubius, alleluia.

8. Vide, Thoma, vide latus,
vide pedes, vide manus,
noli esse incredulus, alleluia.

9. Quando Thomas Christi latus,
pedes vidit atque manus,
Dixit: Tu es Deus meus, alleluia.

10. Beati qui non viderunt,
Et firmiter crediderunt,
vitam aeternam habebunt, alleluia.

11. In hoc festo sanctissimo
sit laus et jubilatio,
benedicamus Domino, alleluia.

12.Ex quibus nos humillimas
devotas atque debitas
Deo dicamus gratias.

Here the Latin is sung by the Daughters of Mary.

The tune is hauntingly beautiful, but it is not considered a true Gregorian chant. However, the Benedictine monks of Solesme included it in the Liber Usualis.

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That Easter day with joy was bright is a translation also by John Mason Neale of the Latin hymn Aurora lucis rutilat, probably by St. Ambrose (330-397). Augustine said that Ambrose set popular hymns to the meter of Roman marching songs to propagate orthodox Catholic theology, because the Arians were using hymns to propagate error. Although hymns are poems, their theological content is important, a point overlooked in some modern hymns.

That Easter day with joy was bright,
The sun shone out with fairer ray,
When, to their longing eyes restored,
The apostles saw their risen Lord.

His risen flesh with radiance glowed;
His wounded hands and feet he showed:
Those scars their solemn witness gave
That Christ was risen from the grave.

O Jesus, King of gentleness,
Do thou thyself our hearts possess;
That we may give thee all our days
The willing tribute of our praise.

O Lord of all, with us abide,
In this our joyful Eastertide,
From every weapon death can wield
Thine own redeemed forever shield.

All praise, O risen Lord, we give
To thee, who, dead, again dost live;
To God the Father equal praise,
And God the Holy Ghost, we raise.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; this performance emphasizes the folk, dance-like origin of the tune. Here is the version from the 1982 Hymnal at St. Bartholomew’s. Here is a version for brass and organ. It seems to be favored by hand bell ringers. And here is a jazz version.

The Latin hymn is attributed to St. Ambrose, but hymns modeled after his were classified as Ambrosiani. Here is the Gregorian melody using a slightly different text. Note the lovely  melismas at the end of the second line of each stanza.

The tune PUER NOBIS is a melody from a fifteenth-century manuscript from Trier. However, the tune probably dates from an earlier time and may even have folk roots. PUER NOBIS was altered in Spangenberg’s Christliches Gesangbuchlein (1568), in Petri’s famous Piae Cantiones (1582), and again in Praetorius’s  Musae Sioniae (Part VI, 1609).

How oft, O Lord, Thy face hath shone was written by William Bright  (1824-1901) for the feast of St. Thomas on December 21. It is of course appropriate for Thomas Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, when the gospel of Christ’s appearance to Thomas is always read. Bright’s compassion for St Thomas is shown throughout this hymn, which re-tells the familiar story to bring out its full implications. The quotation in stanza 2, for example, is an example of the saint’s courage (from John 11: 16).

Here are the current words:

1. How oft, O Lord, thy face hath shone
on doubting souls whose wills were true!
Thou Christ of Peter and of John,
thou art the Christ of Thomas too.

2. He loved thee well, and calmly said,
“Come, let us go, and die with him”;
yet when thine Easter-news was spread,
mid all its light his eyes were dim.

3. His brethren’s word he would not take,
but craved to touch those hands of thine:
when thou didst thine appearance make,
he saw, and hailed his Lord Divine.

4. He saw thee risen; at once he rose
to full belief’s unclouded height;
and still through his confession flows
to Christian souls thy life and light.

5. O Savior, make thy presence known
to all who doubt thy Word and thee;
and teach us in that Word alone
to find the truth that sets us free.

Here is the tune DUKE STREET that we will be using.

They are altered slightly form Bright’s words:

How oft, O Lord, Thy Face hath shone
On doubting souls whose wills were true;
Thou Christ of Cephas and of John,
Thou art the Christ of Thomas too.

He loved Thee well, and calmly said,
‘Come, let us go, and die with Him’;
Yet when Thine Easter news was spread,
’Mid all its light his eyes were dim.

His brethren’s words he would not take,
But craved to touch those hands of Thine:
The bruisèd reed he did not break,
He saw, and hailed his Lord Divine.

He saw Thee ris’n; at once he rose,
To full belief’s unclouded height;
And still through his confession flows
To Christian souls Thy Life and Light.

O Saviour, make Thy presence known
To all who doubt Thy word and Thee;
And teach them in that word alone
To find the truth that sets them free.

And we who know how true Thou art,
And Thee as God and Lord adore,
Give us, we pray, a loyal heart
To trust and love Thee more and more.

William Bright (1824- 1901) was educated at Rugby School and University College, Oxford (BA, 1846, MA, 1849). He was elected to a Fellowship of the College in 1847, and took Holy Orders (deacon 1848, priest 1850). He became a theological tutor at Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland, in 1851, and was appointed Bell Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History by the Scottish bishops. In 1858 he had a serious disagreement with the Bishop of Glasgow over the historical interpretation of an episode in the Reformation concerning church settlement. He was removed from office and so returned to Oxford, where he taught church history. He was appointed Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church in 1868. Among his historical publications were A History of the Church, A.D. 313-451 (Oxford, 1860), Chapters of Early English Church History (Oxford, 1878), and The Roman See in the Early Church (1896). He published sermons (The Incarnation as a Motive Power, 1889) and poems (Athanasius and other Poems, 1858, Iona and other Verses, 1886). His Hymns and Other Poems appeared in 1866, with an enlarged Second Edition in 1874.

DUKE STREET seems to have been written by John Hatton (?-1793). Little is known of his life. He may have been born at Warrington: he was known at St Helens, where he later lived, as ‘John of Warrington’. His address in St Helens was Duke Street.

He is believed to have been the composer of the tune DUKE STREET. Its first recorded appearance is in A Select Collection of Psalm & Hymn Tunes (Glasgow and Edinburgh, 1793), compiled by ‘the late Henry Boyd’.

Millar Patrick wrote of DUKE STREET: ‘What vigour you have in it! — what magnificent movement, what superb curves, every line soaring, subsiding, like the flight of a bird!’

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Anthems

Quia vidisti me, Luca Marenzio (1556-1599)

Quia vidisti me, Thoma, credidisti: beati qui non viderunt, et crediderunt. Alleluia.

Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. Alleluia.

Here is the Progetto Musica.

This motet, written for the Feast of St. Thomas (but also appropriate for the Octave of Easter), is found in the composer’s collection Motectorum pro festis totius anni (first edition printed at Rome by A. Gardano in 1585, second edition printed at Venice by A. Vincenti in 1588).

Italian composer and singer Luca Marenzio (ca. 1553-1599) was considered by many Renaissance musicians to be the chief archetype of the expressive 16th-century Italian madrigal style. The text of this motet is from John 20: 29 – the Antiphon for the Feast of St Thomas, the great doubter. Marenzio’s madrigalian style of text painting is well served here. Note the homophonic emphasis given to the text “beati qui non viderunt” (blessed are they that have not seen).  The motet concludes with an imitative and joyful  “Alleluia.”

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Regina coeli, Palestrina (1525-1594)

Regina caeli laetare, Alleluia. Quia quem meruisti portare, Alleluia. Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluia. Ora pro nobis Deum. Alleluia.

Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia. For He whom you were worthy to bear, alleluia, has risen, as He said, alleluia. Pray for us to God, alleluia.

Here are the King’s Singers.

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A Note on Nomenclature

This Sunday has several names, including Low Sunday. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The origin of the name is uncertain, but it is apparently intended to indicate the contrast between it and the great Easter festival immediately preceding, and also, perhaps, to signify that, being the Octave Day of Easter, it was considered part of that feast, though in a lower degree.

Its liturgical name is Dominica in albis depositis, derived from the fact that on it the neophytes, who had been baptized on Easter Eve, then for the first time laid aside their white baptismal robes. St. Augustine mentions this custom in a sermon for the day, and it is also alluded to in the Eastertide Vesper hymn, “Ad regias Agni dapes” (or, in its older form, “Ad cœnam Agni providi”), written by an ancient imitator of St. Ambrose. Low Sunday is also called by some liturgical writers Pascha clausum, signifying the close of the Easter Octave, and Quasimodo Sunday, from the Introit at Mass — “Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite”, — which words are used by the Church with special reference to the newly baptized neophytes, as well as in general allusion to man’s renovation through the Resurrection. The latter name is still common in parts of France and Germany.

The name of this Feast is the origin of the name of the hunchback, Quasimodo, in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Poor Quasimodo was a foundling who was discovered at the cathedral on Low Sunday and so was named for the Feast. He is introduced in Hugo’s book like this:

Sixteen years previous to the epoch when this story takes place, one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been deposited, after Mass, in the church of Notre- Dame, on the wooden bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left, opposite that great image of Saint Christopher, which the figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, carved in stone, had been gazing at on his knees since 1413, when they took it into their heads to overthrow the saint and the faithful follower. Upon this bed of wood it was customary to expose foundlings for public charity. Whoever cared to take them did so. In front of the wooden bed was a copper basin for alms.

The sort of living being which lay upon that plank on the morning of Quasimodo, in the year of the Lord, 1467, appeared to excite to a high degree, the curiosity of the numerous group which had congregated about the wooden bed. The group was formed for the most part of the fair sex. Hardly any one was there except old women.

In the first row, and among those who were most bent over the bed, four were noticeable, who, from their gray cagoule, a sort of cassock, were recognizable as attached to some devout sisterhood. I do not see why history has not transmitted to posterity the names of these four discreet and venerable damsels. They were Agnes la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, Gauchère la Violette, all four widows, all four dames of the Chapel Etienne Haudry, who had quitted their house with the permission of their mistress, and in conformity with the statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, in order to come and hear the sermon.

However, if these good Haudriettes were, for the moment, complying with the statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, they certainly violated with joy those of Michel de Brache, and the Cardinal of Pisa, which so inhumanly enjoined silence upon them.

“What is this, sister?” said Agnes to Gauchère, gazing at the little creature exposed, which was screaming and writhing on the wooden bed, terrified by so many glances.

“What is to become of us,” said Jehanne, “if that is the way children are made now?”

“I’m not learned in the matter of children,” resumed Agnes, “but it must be a sin to look at this one.”

In England, at one time anyway, on the Monday after Low Sunday, between the hours of 9 and noon, there was the strange custom by which men “captured” women (often by lifting them up in chairs) for a ransom which was given to the Church. On Tuesday the women reciprocate by capturing the men. These two days became known as “Hocktide.” This custom has never been explained.

More recently, this Sunday has been called Divine Mercy Sunday.

During the course of Jesus’ revelations to Saint Faustina on the Divine Mercy He asked on numerous occasions that a feast day be dedicated to the Divine Mercy and that this feast be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter. The liturgical texts of that day, the 2nd Sunday of Easter, concern the institution of the Sacrament of Penance, the Tribunal of the Divine Mercy, and are thus already suited to the request of Our Lord. This Feast, which had already been granted to the nation of Poland and been celebrated within Vatican City, was granted to the Universal Church by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the canonization of Sr. Faustina on 30 April 2000. In a decree dated 23 May 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments stated that “throughout the world the Second Sunday of Easter will receive the name Divine Mercy Sunday, a perennial invitation to the Christian world to face, with confidence in divine benevolence, the difficulties and trials that mankind will experience in the years to come.”

Thomas Sunday is the name of this Sunday in the Eastern Churches. The Sunday after Easter is the Sunday of St. Thomas, also known as Second Sunday or Antipascha (“opposite” Pascha, i.e., at the other end of Bright Week). Historically, this day in the early Church was the day that the newly-baptized Christians removed their robes and entered once again into the life of this world.

This day is also known as Antipascha. This does not mean “opposed to Pascha,” but “in place of Pascha.” Beginning with this first Sunday after Pascha, the Church dedicates every Sunday of the year to the Lord’s Resurrection. Sunday is called “Resurrection” in Russian, and “the Lord’s Day” in Greek. The Orthodox Church dedicates every Sunday of the year to the Lord’s Resurrection starting on this Sunday, the eighth day of the paschal celebration, the last day of Bright Week.

Happy Quasimodo Sunday!

Mary Magdalene reporting the Resurrection to the apostles, St. Alban’s Psalter

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

EASTER SUNDAY

April 1, 2018

8:00 AM Said Mass

10:00 AM Sung Mass with Festal Procession

Common

Messe pour le Samedy de Pasques, Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Hymns

The strife is o’er, the battle done (VICTORY)

Hail thee, festival day (SALVA FESTA DIES))

The day of resurrection (ELLACOMBE)

Jesus Christ is risen today (EASTER HYMN)

Anthems

Meine Seele hört im Sehen, G. F. Handel

I know that my Redeemer liveth, G. F, Handel

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Common

Messe pour le Samedy de Pasques, Charpentier

Hymns

The strife is o’er, the battle done

The strife is o’er, the battle done is from a 17th-century Latin hymn, translated by Francis Pott (1832-1909). The Latin text begins‘Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia./ Finita iam sunt proelia’ It is found in a Jesuit book, Symphonia Sirenum Selectarum, published in Cologne in 1695 in the section of Easter hymns.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

1 The strife is o’er, the battle done;
Now is the Victor’s triumph won;
Now be the song of praise begun.
Alleluia!

2 Death’s mightiest pow’rs have done their worst,
And Jesus hath His foes dispersed;
Let shouts of praise and joy outburst.
Alleluia!

3 On the third morn He rose again
Glorious in majesty to reign;
Oh, let us swell the joyful strain!
Alleluia!

4 He closed the yawning gates of hell;
The bars from heaven’s high portals fell.
Let hymns of praise His triumph tell.
Alleluia!

5 Lord, by the stripes which wounded Thee,
From death’s dread sting Thy servants free
That we may live and sing to Thee.
Alleluia!

Here is the National Cathedral.

The hymn has been brilliantly served by its tune, VICTORY, a free adaptation by William Henry Monk for the first edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern of the ‘Gloria’ in Palestrina’s Magnificat Tertii Toni (‘Magnificat on the third tone’).

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Hail thee, festival day

The refrain of Hail thee, festival day! comes from the 20^th couplet of Venantius Fortunatus’ (c. 540—c. 600) long Latin poem (110 lines!) celebrating the conversion of the Saxons by Felix, Bishop of Nantes (c. 582): Salve feste dies toto venerabilis aevo. Venantius, who traveled around the Germanic kingdoms of Europe as a wandering minstrel, devoted his life to the cause of Christian literary elegance.  As poet to the Merovingian court, he became a friend of the mystic Queen Radegund, and he later became Bishop of Poitiers. The poem was translated by George Gabriel Scott Gillett (1873-1948).

Hail thee, festival day!
blest day to be hallowed forever;
day when our Lord was raised,
breaking the kingdom of death.
1 All the fair beauty of earth,
from the death of the winter arising!
Every good gift of the year
now with its Master returns; [Refrain]
2 Rise from the grave now, O Lord,
the author of life and creation.
Treading the pathway of death,
new life you give to us all: [Refrain]

3 God the Almighty,the Lord,
the Ruler of earth and the heavens,
guard us from harm without;
cleanse us from evil within: [Refrain]

4 Jesus the health of the world,
enlighten our minds, great Redeemer,
Son of the Father supreme,
only begotten of God: [Refrain]

5 Spirit of life and of power,
now flow in us, fount of our being,
light that enlightens us all,
life that in all may abide: [Refrain]

6 Praise to the giver of good!
O lover and author of concord,
pour out your balm on our days;
order our ways in your peace: [Refrain]

Here is a version with brass.

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed the tune SALVA FESTA DIES for the translation by Maurice Frederick Bell, both done for the 1906 English Hymnal. Vaughan Williams’ music adds a regal manner to its religiosity, thereby bearing a resemblance to much English church music from the nineteenth century, but also demonstrating the composer’s vigor in its march-like gait. The main theme is glorious and celebratory without ever veering into a secular sound or mood.

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The day of resurrection (ELLACOMBE)

The day of resurrection is from a Greek hymn by St John Damascene (ca. 655 – ca. 745). It was translated by John Mason Neale (1818-1866). Neale’s translation was printed in his Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862) in ‘The Second Epoch’ of Greek Hymnody, which Neale dated from 726 to 820. The three verses, beginning ‘Αναστáσεως ήμέρα’, made up Ode I of the ‘Canon for Easter Day, called the Golden Canon, or, The Queen of Canons’, from the Pentekostarion Kharmosynon (‘Joyful Pentecostarion’), used from Easter Day to the first Sunday after Pentecost. It had nine ‘Odes’ or sub-divisions, and was sung first at midnight on Easter Eve. With his enthusiasm for the glories of the Eastern Church, Neale quoted a description of the occasion. At midnight, a cannon was fired to announce that 12 o’clock had struck: ‘Then the old Archbishop elevating the cross exclaimed in a loud exulting tone, “Christos anesti, Christ is risen!” and instantly every single individual of all that host took up the cry, and the vast multitude broke through and dispelled for ever the intense and mournful silence which they had maintained so long, with one spontaneous shout of indescribable joy and triumph, “Christ is risen!” “Christ is risen!”’

1 The day of resurrection!
Earth, tell it out abroad;
the Passover of gladness,
the Passover of God.
From death to life eternal,
from this world to the sky,
our Christ hath brought us over,
with hymns of victory.

2 Our hearts be pure from evil,
that we may see aright
the Lord in rays eternal
of resurrection light;
and, list’ning to His accents,
may hear, so calm and plain,
His own “All hail!” and, hearing,
may raise the victor strain.

3 Now let the heav’ens be joyful!
Let earth the song begin!
Let world resound in triumph,
and all that is therein;
let all things seen and unseen
their notes in gladness blend;
for Christ the Lord hath risen,
our joy that hath no end.

Here is the choir of Gloucester Cathedral.

Published in a chapel hymnal for the Duke of Würtemberg (Gesangbuch der Herzogl, 1784), ELLACOMBE (the name of a village in Devonshire, England) was first set to the words “Ave Maria, klarer und lichter Morgenstern.” During the first half of the nineteenth century various German hymnals altered the tune. Since ELLACOMBE’s inclusion in the 1868 Appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern, where it was set to John Daniell’s children’s hymn “Come, Sing with Holy Gladness,” its use throughout the English-speaking world has spread. ELLACOMBE is a rounded bar form (AABA), rather cheerful in character, and easily sung in harmony.

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Jesus Christ is risen today (EASTER HYMN)

Jesus Christ is risen today is from Lyra Davidica (1708). Entitled ‘The Resurrection’, this was in three stanzas in 1708:

Jesus Christ is Risen to day, Halle-Hallelujah
Our triumphant Holyday
Who so lately on the Cross
Suffer’d to redeem our loss.

Hast ye Females from your Fright,
Take to Galilee your Flight:
To his sad Disciples say,
Jesus Christ is Risen to Day.

In our Paschal Joy and Feast,
Let the Lord of Life be blest,
Let the Holy Trine be prais’d,
And thankful Hearts to Heaven be rais’d.

It is a translation of part of an anonymous Latin hymn, ‘Surrexit Christus hodie’, which explains the reference to the ‘Females’ (‘Mulieres o tremulae, In Galilaeam pergite’).

The basic text of the form in which it is generally found in hymnbooks dates from 1749. It was printed in the 2nd edition (of seven, 1741-79) of The Compleat Psalmodist by John Arnold (ca. 1715-1792). It follows Lyra Davidica for much of stanza 1 (line 3 has ‘Who did once upon the Cross’, replacing ‘Who so lately’) but then continues with new verses 2 and 3:

Hymns of praises let us sing
Unto Christ our heavenly King
Who endur’d the Cross and Grave
Sinners to redeem and save.

But the pain that he endured
Our Salvation has procured
Now above the Sky he’s King
Where the Angels ever sing.

Here is King’s College, Cambridge.

The tune is from Lyra Davidica, usually entitled EASTER HYMN. The composer is unknown.

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Anthems

Meine Seele hört im Sehen, G. F. Handel

Meine seele hört im Sehen, 
wie, den Schöpfer zu erhöhen, 
alles jauchzet, alles lacht.
Höret nur, des erblühnden Frühlings Pracht 
ist die Sprache der Natur, 
die sie deutlich durchs Gesicht
allenthalben mit uns spricht.

Here is Beverly Sills. And Nuria Rial.

This is from Handel’s 9 Deutsche Arien (9 German Airs)). Possibly composed around the time that the composer made a final journey to Germany to take leave of his ailing mother, they were Handel’s last settings of texts in his native language. It seems likely that these circumstances contributed to the intimate character of these highly personal works, in combination with the texts themselves. Barthold Heinrich Brockes’ poems point ahead towards the Enlightenment, establishing as their setting a harmonically organised world, in which benevolent Nature is the prime example of God’s bounty.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, G. F. Handel

The Air for soprano “I know that my Redeemer liveth” draws from both Job and Paul. It begins with the “ascending fourth”, a signal observed by musicologist Rudolf Steglich as a unifying motif of the oratorio, on the words “I know”, repeated almost every time these words appear again. “For now is Christ risen” is pictured in a steadily rising melody of more than an octave.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

The Solemn Vigil of Easter

March 31, 2018

8:30 PM

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing (SALZBURG)

Come ye faithful (GAUDEAMUS PARITER)

Anthems

Surrexit Christus, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736)

He is risen, Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)

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Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing 

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing is a translation by the Robert Campbell (1814-1868) of the seventh century Latin hymn, Ad regias agni dapes, which was sung by the newly baptized at Easter when they were first admitted to communion. Our victorious King through His death and resurrection has caused the angel of death to pass over us. We are redeemed by His blood, which opens Paradise to us where we will live forever.  The LORD brought Israel out of Egypt through the sea into the promised land by the blood of the Lamb. Jesus through His death brings us through the wilderness of this life by feeding us with Himself, the true manna that comes down from heaven.

1 At the Lamb’s high feast we sing
praise to our victorious King,
who hath washed us in the tide
flowing from his piercèd side;
praise we him, whose love divine
gives his sacred blood for wine,
gives his body for the feast,
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.
2 Where the Paschal blood is poured,
death’s dark angel sheathes his sword;
Israel’s hosts triumphant go
through the wave that drowns the foe.
Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed,
Paschal victim, Paschal bread;
with sincerity and love
eat we manna from above.
3 Mighty victim from the sky,
hell’s fierce powers beneath thee lie;
thou hast conquered in the fight,
thou hast brought us life and light.
Now no more can death appal,
now no more the grave enthral:
thou hast opened paradise,
and in thee thy saints shall rise.
4 Easter triumph, Easter joy,
sin alone can this destroy;
from sin’s power do thou set free
souls new-born, O Lord, in thee.
Hymns of glory and of praise,
risen Lord, to thee we raise;
holy Father, praise to thee,
with the Spirit, ever be.

Raised a Presbyterian, the Edinburgh advocate Robert Campbell joined the Episcopal Church of Scotland. While he was a Scottish Episcopalian (imagine!), he translated this hymn in 1850 and other Latin hymns for relaxation. In 1852, he joined the Roman Catholic Church. Much of his life, both as a Protestant and a Catholic was dedicated to the education of Edinburgh’s poorest children. He authored a report, Past and present treatment of Roman Catholic children in Scotland, by the Board of Supervision for Relief of the Poor (1863).

The hymn Ad regias Agni dapes has a checkered history. It was originally Ad coenam Agni providi a sixth-century Ambrosian hymn, that is, a hymn composed in iambic tetrameter, after the model of the hymns that St. Ambrose had composed after the model of Roman marching songs. This meter is close to the meter of rythm prose and is also easily adopted to music. The hymn was composed when Latin was still a spoken language. For example, it treats stolis albis candidi [bright with white garments] as if it were istolis albis candidi (eight syllables): ist– is how they pronounced st– in the ‘Vulgar Latin’ period. I presume that the Spanish habit of adding a syllable before an s comes form this: Estarbucks. The hymn also used words from Christian Latin, such as coena, the word used for the Last Supper.

1. Ad coenam Agni providi,
   stolis salutis candidi,
   post transitum maris Rubri
   Christo canamus principi.
2. Cuius corpus sanctissimum
   in ara crucis torridum,
   sed et cruorem roseum
   gustando, Dei vivimus.
3.  Protecti paschae vespero
   a devastante angelo,
   de Pharaonis aspero
   sumus erepti imperio.
4.  Iam pascha nostrum Christus est,
   agnus occisus innocens;
   sinceritatis azyma
   qui carnem suam obtulit.
5. O vera, digna hostia,
   per quam franguntur tartara,
   captiva plebs redimitur,
   redduntur vitae praemia!
6. Consurgit Christus tumulo,
   victor redit de barathro,
   tyrannum trudens vinculo
   et paradisum reserans.
7. Esto perenne mentibus
   paschale, Iesu, gaudium
   et nos renatos gratine
   tuis triumphis aggrega.
8.  Iesu, tibi sit gloria,
   qui morte victa praenites,
   cum Patre et almo Spiritu,
   in sempiterna saecula. Amen.

Here is John Mason Neale’s translation:

1. The Lamb’s high banquet we await
   in snow-white robes of royal state:
   and now, the Red Sea’s channel past,
   to Christ our Prince we sing at last.
2. Upon the Altar of the Cross
   His Body hath redeemed our loss:
   and tasting of his roseate Blood,
   our life is hid with Him in God,
3. That Paschal Eve God’s arm was bared,
   the devastating Angel spared:
   by strength of hand our hosts went free
   from Pharaoh’s ruthless tyranny.
4. Now Christ, our Paschal Lamb, is slain,
   the Lamb of God that knows no stain,
   the true Oblation offered here,
   our own unleavened Bread sincere.
5. O Thou, from whom hell’s monarch flies,
   O great, O very Sacrifice,
   Thy captive people are set free,
   and endless life restored in Thee.’
6.  For Christ, arising from the dead,
   from conquered hell victorious sped,
   and thrust the tyrant down to chains,
   and Paradise for man regains.
7. We pray Thee, King with glory decked,
   in this our Paschal joy, protect
   from all that death would fain effect
   Thy ransomed flock, Thine own elect.
8. To Thee who, dead, again dost live,
   all glory Lord, Thy people give;
   all glory, as is ever meet,
   to Father and to Paraclete. Amen.

And so the hymn was sung for a thousand years.

Urban VIII, by Pietro da Cortona (1627)

And then came the Renaissance and Maffeo Barbarini was elected to the papal throne as Urban VIII (reigned 1623-1644). The new liturgical books of Pius V had just been approved, but Urban found the Latin tasteless and inelegant and barbarous. So he and his assistants “improved” the ancient hymns. As one annoyed hymnologist writes: “Ambrose and Prudentius took something classical and made it Christian; the revisers and their imitators took something Christian and tried to make it classical. The result may be pedantry, and sometimes perhaps poetry; but it is not piety.”

So Ad cenam Agni providi in 1632 became Ad regias Agni dapes, the version translated by Campbell.  This hymn us used at Vespers from Easter Sunday until Ascension. Notice I say used, because the classicized hymns were not untended to be sung, but recited privately.

Ad regias Agni dapes,
Stolis amicti candidis,
Post transitum maris Rubri,
Christo canamus Principi.

2. Divina cuius caritas
Sacrum propinat sanguinem,
Almique membra corporis
Amor sacerdos immolat.

3. Sparsum cruorem postibus
Vastator horret Angelus:
Fugitque divisum mare,
Merguntur hostes fluctibus.

4. Iam Pascha nostrum Christus est,
Paschalis idem victima:
Et pura puris mentibus
Sinceritatis azyma.

5. O vera caeli víctima,
Subiecta cui sunt tartara,
Soluta mortis vincula,
Recepta vitæ praemia.

6. Victor subactis inferis,
Trophaea Christus explicat,
Caeloque aperto, subditum
Regem tenebrarum trahit.

7. Ut sis perenne mentibus
Paschale Iesu gaudium,
A morte dira criminum
Vitæ renatos libera.

8. Deo Patri sit gloria,
Et Filio, qui a mortuis
Surrexit, ac Paraclito,
In sempiterna saecula. Amen.

Dapes, a classical poetic word, is substituted for the Christian coena, obscuring the reference to the Last Supper and to the Eucharist. The original reference to the roasted (torridum) body of Christ , was eliminated, and Victorian commentators, although they understood the reference to the Paschal Lamb, found the image horrifying.

The Benedictines and the Dominicans would have nothing to do with such innovations, and continued to use the original version of the hymn. Their attitude was Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini.

Ad regias agni dapes is mentioned in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Here is the context:

Pater patruum cum filiabus familiarum. Or, but, now, and, ariring out of her mirgery margery watersheads and, to change that subjunct from the traumaturgid for once in a while and darting back to stuff, if so be you may identify yourself with the him in you, that fluctuous neck merchamtur, bloodfadder and milkmudder, since then our too many of her, Abha na Lifé, and getting on to dadaddy again, as them we’re ne’er free of, was he in tea e’er he went on the bier or didn’t he ontime do something seemly heavy in sugar? He sent out Christy Columb and he came back with a jailbird’s unbespokables in his beak and then he sent out Le Caron Crow and the peacies are still looking for him. The seeker from the swayed, the beesabouties from the parent swarm. Speak to the right! Rotacist ca canny! He caun ne’er be bothered but maun e’er be waked. If there is a future in every past that is present Quis est qui non novit quinnigan and Qui quae quot at Quinnigan’s Quake! Stump! His producers are they not his consumers? Your exagmination round his factification for incamination of a warping process. Declaim!

—Arra irrara hirrara man, weren’t they arriving in clansdestinies for the Imbandiment of Ad Regias Agni Dapes, fogabawlers and panhibernskers, after the crack and the lean years, scalpjaggers and houthhunters, like the messicals of the great god, a scarlet trainful, the Twoedged Petrard, totalling, leggats and prelaps, in their aggregate ages two and thirty plus undecimmed centries of them with insiders, extraomnes and tuttifrutties allcunct, from Rathgar, Rathanga, Rountown and Rush, from America Avenue and Asia Place and the Affrian Way and Europa Parade and besogar the wallies of Noo Soch Wilds and from Vico, Mespil Rock and Sorrento, for the lure of his weal and the fear of his oppidumic, to his salon de espera in the keel of his kraal, like lodes of ores flocking fast to Mount Maximagnetic, afeerd he was a gunner but affaird to stay away, Merrionites, Dumstdumbdrummers, Luccanicans, Ashtoumers, Batterysby Parkes and Krumlin Boyards, Phillipsburgs, Cabraists and Finglossies, Ballymunites, Raheniacs and the bettlers of Clontarf, for to contemplate in manifest and pay their firstrate duties before the both of him, twelve stone a side, with their Thieve le Roué! and their Shvr yr Thrst! and their Uisgye ad Inferos! and their Usque ad Ebbraios! at and in the licensed boosiness primises of his delhightful bazar and reunited magazine hall, by the magazine wall.

Completely clear, I hope.

A helpful commentary explains:

The tune is SALZBURG,  by Jakob Hintze (1622-1702),who in 1666 became court musician to the Elector of Brandenburg at Berlin; but he retired to his birthplace in 1695, and died at Berlin with the reputation of being an excellent contrapuntist.

Here is At the Lamb’s high feast sung at at the most appropriate occasion: Communion at Easter.

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Come ye faithful 

Come ye faithful, raise the strain is from a  Greek hymn attributed to St John Damascene (ca. 655- ca. 745), and was translated by John Mason Neale (1818-1866).

This translation of the Greek ‘άσωμεν πάντες λαοί’ (Asomen pantes laoi’) is from the ‘Second Epoch’ of Greek hymnody (726-820) in Neale’s Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862). It was ‘Ode I’ for St Thomas’s Sunday (Neale’s explanatory note in the Preface explained that ‘A Canon consists of nine Odes — each Ode containing any number of troparia from three to beyond twenty’ (p. xxix). This was Ode I of ‘the three first of our Saint’s Canon for S. Thomas’s Sunday, called also Renewal Sunday: with us Low Sunday.’ It had four verses. The hymn is notable for its beautiful linking of spring with the resurrection, and for its use of the crossing of the Red Sea as a type of the liberating work of Jesus Christ in verse 1. It is based on the Song of Moses in Exodus 15.

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
Of triumphant gladness;
God hath brought his Israel
Into joy from sadness;
Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke
Jacob’s sons and daughters;
Led them with unmoistened foot
Through the Red Sea waters.

‘Tis the spring of souls today;
Christ hath burst his prison,
And from three days’ sleep in death
As a sun hath risen;
All the winter of our sins,
Long and dark, is flying
From his light, to whom we give
Laud and praise undying.

Now the queen of seasons, bright
With the day of splendor,
With the royal feast of feasts,
Comes its joy to render;
Comes to glad Jerusalem,
Who with true affection
Welcomes in unwearied strains
Jesus’ resurrection.

Neither might the gates of death,
Nor the tomb’s dark portal,
Nor the watchers, nor the seal,
Hold thee as a mortal:
But today amidst thine own
Thou didst stand, bestowing
That thy peace which evermore
Passeth human knowing.

The tune GAUDEAMUS PARITER is by Johann Horn (1490-1547).  His original name was Johann Roh, but he styled himself Cornu in Latin and Horn in German. He was ordained priest in 1518 and became a senior cleric in the Moravian church. He is known for two books: his Písnĕ chval božských (Prague, 1541), and his edition of the Bohemian hymnbook Ein Gesangbuch der Brüder in Behemen und Merherrn published in Nuremberg in 1544. One medieval melody found in 15th-century Bohemian collections with the words ‘Gaudeamus pariter, omnes et singuli’ was sung across much of central Europe and later achieved considerable popularity.

Here is a version for brass. Here is a toccata for organ. An arrangement for handbells. I like the jaunty variation. Here is Flor Peeters’ arrangement for organ. A little slow for my taste.

____________________________

Anthems

Surrexit Christus, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Surrexit Christus vere de sepulchro, alleluia.

Christ is truly risen from the grave, alleluia.

___________________________

He is risen, Percy Whitlock

He is risen! He is risen! Tell it with joyful voice. He has burst his three days’ prison; Let the whole wide earth rejoice. Death is conquered; man is free. Christ has won the victory. 2. Come, ye sad and fearful-hearted, with glad smile and radiant brow; Lent’s long shadows have departed, all his woes are over now; and the passion that He bore: sin and pain can vex no more. 3 Come with high and holy hymning; Chant our Lord’s triumphant lay. Not one darksome cloud is dimming yonder glorious morning ray, breaking o’er the purple east, brighter far our Easter feast.

Percy William Whitlock (1903-1946) was an English organist and composer best remembered for his post-romantic styled organ, choir, and orchestral works. Whitlock was born in Chatham, Kent. From 1920-1924, he held a Kent Scholarship and studied music at the Royal College of Music in London; among his teachers were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Henry Ley. Whitlock was the assistant organist at Rochester Cathedral in Kent from 1921 to 1930. He was appointed the Director of Music and organist for St. Stephen’s Anglican Church in Bournemouth, serving in that capacity from 1930 to 1935. From 1932 until his death, he was the civic organist for Bournemouth where he regularly performed concerts at the Pavilion Theatre, collaborated with the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra, and performed for the BBC live broadcasts.

Throughout his adult life, Whitlock endured health problems that ultimately ended his life early. In his twenties, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and suffered from hypertension. Toward the end of his life, he completely lost his eyesight.

Whitlock’s compositional style is characterized by his use of lush harmonies, which were popular among composers of his generation. He was influenced by his teachers, Vaughan Williams and Stanford, and combined various elements of their output with other composers of the era: Edward Elgar, Roger Quilter, and Sergei Rachmaninov. Following Whitlock’s death, music aesthetics were quickly changing; romanticism was supplanted by modern and experimental styles of composition. As a consequence, much of Whitlock’s music was neglected, rarely performed, and largely forgotten. A recent renewal of interest in the works of composers of Whitlock’s era has generated a revival of his works and his oeuvre is now appreciated.

Crucifixion with two donors, El Greco

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Good Friday

March 30, 2018

Noon Mass of the Pre-Sanctified

Hymn

O sorrow deep!

 This Good Friday and Holy Saturday lament was printed in eight 5-line verses in Johannes Risten himlischer Lieder. It was entitled ‘Klägliches Grab-Lied/ Uber die trawrige Begräbnisse unseres Seylandes Jesu Christi/ am stillen freytage zu singen’ (‘ A sorrowful funeral hymn on the mournful entombment of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to be sung on Good Friday’). A note was added at the end: ‘The first verse of this funeral hymn, along with its exceptional melody, came accidentally into my hands. As I was greatly pleased with it, I added the other seven as they stand here, because I could not be a party to the use of the other verses.’ This was presumably because of their Roman Catholic content. The first verse referred to was printed in the Roman Catholic Würzburg Gesang-Buch (1628).

O sorrow deep!
Who would not weep
With heartfelt pain and sighing?
God the Father’s only Son
In the tomb is lying.

O Jesus blest,
My help and rest,
With tears I pray thee, hear me:
Now, and even unto death,
Dearest Lord, be near me.

Here is the melody.

1 O Traurigkeit,
o Herzeleid!
Ist das nicht zu beklagen?
Gott des Vaters einig Kind,
wird ins Grab getragen.
2 O große Noth!
Gott selbst liegt tot,
am Kreuz ist er gestorben,
hat dadurch das Himmelreich
uns aus Lieb’ erworben.
3 O Menschenkind,
nur deine Sünd’
hat dieses angerichtet,
da du durch die Missetat
warest ganz vernichtet.
4 Dein Bräutigam,
das Gotteslamm,
liegt hier mit Blut beflossen,
welches er ganz mildiglich
hat für dich vergossen.
5 O süßer Mund.
o Glaubensgrund,
wie bist du doch zerschlagen!
Alles, was auf Erden lebt,
muß dich ja beklagen.
6 O lieblich Bild,
schön, zart und mild.
du Söhnlein der Jungfrauen,
niemand kann dein heißes Blut
sonder Reu’ anschauen!
7 O selig ist,
zu jeder Frist,
der dieses recht bedenket,
wie der Herr der Herrlichkeit
wird ins Grab gesenket!
8 O Jesu, du,
mein’ Hilf’ und Ruh’,
ich bitte dich mit Tränen:
Hilf, daß ich mich bis ins Grab
nach dir möge sehnen!

Johann Rist (1608-1667) was born at Ottensen in Holstein-Pinneberg (today Hamburg), the son of the Lutheran pastor of that place, Caspar Rist. He received his early training at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg and the Gymnasium Illustre in Bremen; he then studied theology at the University of Rinteln. Under the influence of Josua Stegman there, his interest in hymn writing began. On leaving Rinteln, he tutored the sons of a Hamburg merchant, accompanying them to the University of Rostock, where he himself studied Hebrew, mathematics, and medicine. During his time at Rostock, the Thirty Years War almost emptied the University, and Rist himself lay there for several weeks, suffering from pestilence. In 1650, he became tutor in the house of Landschreiber Heinrich Sager at Heide, in Holstein. Two years later (1635) he was appointed pastor of the village of Wedel on the Elbe. He died in Wedel on 31 August 1667.

____________________________

The Reproaches, Tomás Luis de Victoria

In the Catholic liturgy of Good Friday, the day of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion, the Eucharist is not celebrated. Instead, the service includes a quasi-dramatic recitation of the Passion according to St. John, and a solemn act of veneration of the Cross. The priest unveils the image of the cross, and people may come forth and adore the symbol of the atoning death, while hymns, motets, and “reproaches” are sung by the choir. The music for the “reproaches” is entitled Popule meus, from the text of the first refrain, “My people, what have I done to you, and how have I grieved you? Answer me.” Among the thirty-seven various pieces of Holy Week music published by Tomas Luis de Victoria in 1585 is a simple, but quite effective, setting of these reproaches, or improperia. The liturgical form calls for an alternation between two refrains and a series of versets. The latter, left to be sung in Gregorian plainchant, all follow a poignant parallel structure, calling to mind (in the first person of the Deity) first an act of God’s mercy and providence from the past, and then a present element of the Passion, such as

“Because I led you from the land of Egypt, you have prepared a Cross for your savior.”

and

“I have scourged Egypt with its firstborn for love of you, and you have delivered me to be scourged.”

Interspersed with these versets are two refrains, both of which Victoria sets to fairly simple homophony. The first is the “Popule meus,” again in the first person, as if God Himself is reproaching His people for their acts which led to the Cross. The second, fascinatingly, presents the only survival in the Western liturgy (besides the common Mass text “Kyrie eleison”) of a text in Greek. This ancient relic, the “Trisagion,” a threefold acclamation of the holiness of God, is intended to be sung first in Greek, and then in Latin.

Here it is sung in English at the Church of the Advent in Boston.

___________________________

Crucifixus, Claudio Monteverdi

Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est

Here is the Capella Mariana.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Maundy Thursday

March 28, 2018

7:00 PM Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Common

Missa Pange Lingua, Josquin de Prez

Hymns

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness (SCHMÚCKE DICH)

And now, O Father, mindful of Thy love (UNDE ET MEMORES)

Now, my tongue, the mystery telling

Anthems

Ubi caritas, Maurice Durefle

Ave verum corpus, William Byrd

_______________________

Common

Missa Pange Lingua, Josquin de Prez

Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua is composed on material derived from the melody to which, from the 13th century onwards, Thomas of Aquinas’s adaptation of a hymn by Venantius Fortunatus may have been most frequently sung. If anything is fascinating in the composer’s setting of the Ordinary text, it is certainly the way in which he has conceived from this material a melodic framework in which the declamation of the text remains crystal-clear. In those sections with much text, the opening of a phrase is sung to a minimum of notes, which strictly follows the declamation of the text. Through this approach, in imitation in all voices, these clear-cut melodies clearly affirm what has just been stated. In general, melodic continuation either follows the principle of one note to one syllable, or, within this stream, slightly emphasizes a particular word by a few extra notes, which may stress its particular meaning. Towards cadences between two or more voices in imitation, the leading voice may approach the close of its line with a short improvisation on a foregoing melodic element, or by a subtle embellishment that not infrequently functions as exclamation sign. In those Ordinary movements with little text, the structure of melodic phrases in general leaves no doubt where repetition of text has been intended, particularly in the long-winded duos in the Sanctus. In these sections it is fascinating to rediscover the composer’s step-wise presentation of text.

Hymns

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness. The original German text, Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, was written by the German politician and poet Johann Franck (1618—1677) in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. It expresses an intimate relationship between the individual believer and his Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus, ascended into heaven, is still present as our food in this “wondrous banquet.” He is the fount, from whom our being flows as we receive Him and are filled with Him. He feeds us and transforms us into His likeness so that we become His joy and boast and glory before the heavenly court.

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
leave the gloomy haunts of sadness;
come into the daylight’s splendour,
there with joy thy praises render
unto him whose grace unbounded
hath this wondrous banquet founded:
high o’er all the heavens he reigneth,
yet to dwell with thee he deigneth.

Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
light, who dost my soul enlighten,
joy, the sweetest heart e’er knoweth,
fount, whence all my being floweth,
at thy feet I cry, my Maker,
let me be a fit partaker
of this blessed food from heaven,
for our good, thy glory, given.

Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
let me gladly here obey thee;
never to my hurt invited,
be thy love with love requited:
from this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
through the gifts thou here dost give me,
as thy guest in heaven receive me.

Here is the Schola Cantorum of St. Peters-in-the-Loop singing the hymn. Here is the Hastings Choir.

Here is the 1674 text.

1. Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele!
Laß die dunckle Sünden Höle!
Komm ans helle Licht gegangen;
Fange herrlich an zu prangen.
Denn der Herr voll Heyl und Gnaden,
Wil dich itzt zu Gaste laden,
Der den Himmel kan verwalten,
Wil itzt Herberg’ in dir halten.

2. Eile, wie Verlobten pflegen,
Deinem Bräutigam entgegen,
Der da mit dem Gnaden-Hammer
Klopfft an deine Hertzens-Kammer.
Oeffn’ ihm bald die Geistes-Pforten:
Red ihn an mit schönen Worten:
Komm, mein Liebster, laß dich küssen!
Laß mich deiner nicht mehr missen.

3. Zwar in Kauffung theurer Wahren
Pflegt man sonst kein Geld zu sparen:
Aber du wilt für die Gaben
Deiner Huld kein Geld nicht haben:
Weil in allen Bergwercks-Gründen
Kein solch Kleinod ist zu finden,
Daß die Blut-gefüllte Schaalen
Und dis Manna kan bezahlen.

4. Ach! wie hungert mein Gemüthe,
Menschen-Freund, nach deiner Güte!
Ach! wie pfleg’ ich offt, mit Thränen,
Mich nach de  iner Kost zu sehnen!
Ach! wie pfleget mich zu dürsten,
Nach dem Tranck des Lebens-Fürsten!
Wünsche stets daß mein Gebeine
Sich durch Gott mit Gott vereine.

5. Beydes Lachen und auch Zittern
Lässet sich in mir itzt wittern:
Das Geheinmiß dieser Speise,
Und die unerforschte Weise,
Machet daß ich früh vermercke,
Herr, die Grösse deiner Stärcke!
Ist auch wohl ein Mensch zu finden
Der dein’ Allmacht solt ergründen?

6. Nein! Vernunfft die muß hier weichen,
Kan dieß Wunder nicht erreichen:
Daß diß Brodt nie wird verzehret,
Ob es gleich viel tausend nehret;
Und daß mit dem Safft der Reben
Uns wird Christi Blut gegeben.
O der grossen Heimligkeiten
Die nur Gottes Geist kan deuten!

7. Jesu, meine Lebens-Sonne!
Jesu, meine Freud’ und Wonne!
Jesu, du mein gantz Beginnen,
Lebens-Quell und Licht der Sinnen!
Hier fall ich zu deinen Füssen!
Laß mich würdiglich gemessen
Dieser deiner Himmels-Speise,
Mir zum Heyl, und dir zum Preise!

8. Herr, es hat dein treues Lieben
Dich vom Himmel abgetrieben,
Daß du willig hast dein Leben
In den Tod für uns gegeben,
Und darzu gantz unverdrossen,
Herr, dein Blut für uns vergossen,
Das uns itzt kan kräfftig träncken,
Deiner Liebe zu gedencken!

9. Jesu wahres Brodt des Lebens!
Hilff, daß ich doch nicht vergebens,
Oder mir vielleicht zum Schaden
Sey zu deinem Tisch geladen!
Laß mich durch diß Seelen-Essen
Deine Liebe recht ermessen,
Daß ich auch, wie itzt auf Erden,
Mag dein Gast im Himmel.

The erotic imagery in the German was eliminated by Catherine Winkworth when she translated the hymn for her Lyra Germanica.

The original 1674 German text was written by

Johann Franck 

Johann Franck (1618-1677) a was German poet, lawyer and public official. After his father’s death in 1620, Franck’s uncle by marriage, the town judge, Adam Tielckau, adopted him and sent him to schools in Guben, Cottbus, Stettin, and Thorn. On June 28, 1638, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg to study jurisprudence. This was the only German university left undisturbed by the Thirty Years’ War. Here his religious spirit, his love of nature, and his friendship with such men as the his poetic mentor, Simon Dach and Heinrich Held, preserved him from sharing in the excesses of his fellow students.

Johann Franck returned to Guben at Easter 1640, at his mother’s urgent request; she wished to have him near her in those times of war when Guben frequently suffered from the presence of both Swedish and Saxon troops. After his return from Prague, in May 1645, Franck embarked on a distinguished civic career as attorney, city councillor (1648) and Burgermeister (Mayor) (1661), and in 1671 (or 1670) was appointed as county elder of Guben in the margravate (Landtag – Diet)) of Lower Lusatia.

Johann Franck wrote both secular and religious poetry and published his first work, Hundertönige Vaterunsersharfe, at Guben in 1646. Almost his entire output is brought together in the two-volume Teutsche Gedichte. The first part, Geistliches Sion (Guben, 1672), contains 110 religious songs, provided with some 80 melodies. Bach composed 14 settings of seven of his texts, the most famous being the motet Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227.

Johann Crüger

The chorale melody associated with this text was composed by the German Lutheran theologian and musician, Johann Crüger (1598-1662).  After passing through the schools at Guben, Sorau and Breslau, the Jesuit College at Olmütz, and the Poets’ school at Regensburg, he made a tour in Austria, and, in 1615, settled at Berlin. There, save for a short residence at the University of Wittenberg, in 1620, he employed himself as a private tutor till 1622. In 1622 he was appointed Cantor of St. Nicholas’s Church at Berlin, and also one of the masters of the Greyfriars Gymnasium. He died at Berlin Feb. 23, 1662. Crüger wrote no hymns, although in some American hymnals he appears as “Johann Krüger, 1610,” as the author of the supposed original of C. Wesley’s “Hearts of stone relent, relent”. He was one of the most distinguished musicians of his time. Of his hymn tunes, some 20 are still in use, the best known probably being that to “Nun danket alle Gott”, which is set to No. 379 in Hymns Ancient & Modern.

_____________________________________

And now, O Father, mindful of Thy love

And now, O Father, mindful of the love was composed by Anglican High Churchman William Bright (1824—1901), He was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, and then worked in Scotland, where his views on the Reformation caused him to be ejected by the Bishop of Glasgow. He then returned to Oxford. 

1 And now, O Father, mindful of the love
that bought us, once for all, on Calvary’s tree,
and having with us him that pleads above,
we here present, we here spread forth to thee
that only offering perfect in thine eyes,
the one true, pure, immortal sacrifice.

2 Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
and only look on us as found in him;
look not on our misusings of thy grace,
our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
for lo, between our sins and their reward
we set the Passion of thy Son our Lord.

3 And then for those, our dearest and our best,
by this prevailing presence we appeal:
O fold them closer to thy mercy’s breast,
O do thine utmost for their souls’ true weal;
from tainting mischief keep them white and clear,
and crown thy gifts with strength to persevere.

4 And so we come: O draw us to thy feet,
most patient Saviour, who canst love us still;
and by this food, so aweful and so sweet,
deliver us from every touch of ill:
in thine own service make us glad and free,
and grant us never more to part with thee.

Here is the Choir of Marlborough College.

The text was inspired by the Latin Canon that begins Te Igitur, clementissime Pater:

And now, Lord, we Thy servants, 
and with us Thy holy people,
 calling to mind 
the blessed Passion of the same Christ, Thy Son, our Lord,
 and also His Resurrection from the grave
 and His glorious Ascension into heaven,
 offer to Thy excellent majesty, 
of  Thy gifts and presents, 
a pure Victim, a holy Victim, a spotless  Victim, 
the holy Bread of eternal life,
 and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.

William Bright

William Bright  D.D. (1824-1901) was educated at Rugby School and University College, Oxford (BA, 1846, MA, 1849). He was elected to a Fellowship of the College in 1847, and took Holy Orders (deacon 1848, priest 1850). He became a theological tutor at Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland, in 1851, and was appointed Bell Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History by the Scottish bishops. In 1858 he had a serious disagreement with the Bishop of Glasgow over the historical interpretation of an episode in the Reformation concerning church settlement. He was removed from office and so returned to Oxford, where he taught church history. He was appointed Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church in 1868.

William Henry Monk

The tune UNDE ET MEMORES was composed by William Henry Monk (1823-1889). It marks the rhythm very beautifully with a crochet on the third and seventh syllable of lines one and three, varied on the fifth syllable in lines two and four.

Monk (1823– 1889) was an English organist, church musician and music editor who composed popular hymn tunes, including one of the most famous, “Eventide”, used for the hymn “Abide with Me”. He also wrote music for church services and anthems. In 1847, Monk became choirmaster at King’s College London. There he developed an interest in incorporating plainchant into Anglican services, an idea suggested by William Dyce, a King’s College professor with whom Monk had much contact.

___________________________

Now, my tongue, the mystery telling

This is a translation of the Pange lingua, which was written by Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) as the hymn for Vespers of the newly established feast of Corpus Christi. Aquinas had been invited in 1264 by Pope Urban IV to produce a liturgy for this festival, and this hymn belongs to that provision.  It is patterned on the processional hymn Pange lingua, written by Venantius Fortunatus (530-600). The translation in the 1940 Hymnal is made up of various translations. The melody  is taken from the Sarum liturgy.

For an analysis fo teh Pange lingua, see David Nussbaum’s Aquinas and the Aesthetics of Latin Poetry.

1 Now, my tongue, the mystery telling
of the glorious body sing,
and the blood, all price excelling,
which the Gentiles’ Lord and King,
in a Virgin’s womb once dwelling,
shed for this world’s ransoming.
2 Given for us, and condescending
to be born for us below,
he, with us in converse blending,
dwelt the seed of truth to sow,
till he closed with wondrous ending
his most patient life of woe.
3 That last night, at supper lying,
‘mid the Twelve, his chosen band,
Jesus, with the law complying,
keeps the feast its rites demand;
then, more precious food supplying,
gives himself with his own hand.
4 Word-made-flesh, true bread he maketh
by his word his flesh to be,
wine his blood; which whoso taketh
must from carnal thoughts be free:
faith alone, though sight forsaketh,
shows true hearts the mystery.
5 Therefore we, before him bending,
this great sacrament revere:
types and shadows have their ending,
for the newer rite is here;
faith, our outward sense befriending,
makes our inward vision clear.
6 Glory let us give and blessing
to the Father and the Son,
honour, might, and praise addressing,
while eternal ages run;
ever too his love confessing,
who, from both, with both is One. Amen.

Here is Pange lingua with the Gregorian melody.

Pange, lingua, gloriósi
Córporis mystérium,
Sanguinísque pretiósi,
Quem in mundi prétium
Fructus ventris generósi
Rex effúdit géntium.
Nobis datus, nobis natus
Ex intácta Vírgine,
Et in mundo conversátus,
Sparso verbi sémine,
Sui moras incolátus
Miro clausit órdine.
In suprémæ nocte coenæ
Recúmbens cum frátribus
Observáta lege plene
Cibis in legálibus,
Cibum turbæ duodénæ
Se dat suis mánibus.
Verbum caro, panem verum
Verbo carnem éfficit:
Fitque sanguis Christi merum,
Et si sensus déficit,
Ad firmándum cor sincérum
Sola fides súfficit.
TANTUM ERGO SACRAMÉNTUM
Venerémur cérnui:
Et antíquum documéntum
Novo cedat rítui:
Præstet fides suppleméntum
Sénsuum deféctui.
Genitóri, Genitóque
Laus et jubilátio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedíctio:
Procedénti ab utróque
Compar sit laudátio.
Amen. Alleluja.

_____________________________

Anthems

Ubi caritas, Maurice Durefle

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exultemus, et in ipso iucundemur.
Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero. Amen.

Where charity and love are, God is there.
Christ’s love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other
with a sincere heart. Amen.

Here is the King’s College Choir.

Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) was an introspective and highly self-critical musician. As a result, he only published fourteen works in his lifetime. Ubi caritas, composed in 1960, is based on the Gregorian chant of the same name. The meditative text is set so that the freely flowing motion of the chant, first heard in the altos, is always at the forefront. It is primarily homophonic, with each voice moving together in hymn-like fashion.

_____________________

Ave verum corpus, William Byrd

Ave verum corpus natum ex Maria virgine, vere passum immolatum in cruce pro homine, cuius latus perforatum unda fluxit sanguine, esto nobis praegustatum mortis in examine. O dulcis, o pie, o Jesu, fili Mariae, miserere mei.

Hail, true Body, born of the Virgin Mary, who having truly suffered, was sacrificed on the cross for mankind, whose pierced side flowed with water and blood: May it be for us a foretaste [of the Heavenly banquet] in the trial of death. O sweet, O gentle, O Jesu, son of Mary, have mercy on me.

William Byrd (c. 1540-1623)

16th Century England, under the charge of Queen Elizabeth I, was officially Protestant; and although Byrd was famous in his day, he constantly lived in fear of losing commissions because of his Catholic faith. Because of this, many of Byrd’s earlier sacred works were smaller in scope, and included phrases and musical suspensions meant to secretly signify the desire for equal protection for Catholics in England. By 1605, under the rule of King James I, Byrd felt comfortable enough to compose his most overtly Catholic book, Gradualia. From this collection comes this “Ave Verum Corpus.”

Here are the Tallis Scholars