Mount Calvary Music: Corpus Christi 2017

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Corpus Christi 

Mount Calvary Church

of the Roman Catholic Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Prelude: Le banquet céleste, Olivier Messiaen

Hymns

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness.

O food to pilgrims given

Father, we thank thee who hast planted

Anthems

Caro mea vere est cibus, by Francisco Guerrero

O sacrum convivium, by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

Postlude: Prelude and Fugue in A Major, BWV 536 – J.S. Bach

Common

 Communion Service (Collegium Regale) by Harold Darke and Creed from the Missa de Angelis

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Hymns

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.

Catherine Winkworth

in her Lyra Germanica (1854).

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 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.

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, ed.

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

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O food to pilgrims given is a translation of O esca viatorum, an anonymous Latin hymn first published in 1647. In the first verse, we express the desire to unite with Christ by means of His body, the manna from heaven; in the second, by means of His blood, the fountain of living water that gives us eternal life. In the third verse, we desire the vision of Christ’s face unveiled, whose hidden presence we adore in the eucharistic species.

Here is the Liturgical Choir at the University of Notre Dame singing O esca viatorum. Here is a small choir at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

O food to pilgrims given,
O bread of life from Heaven,
O manna from on high!
We hunger, Lord, supply us,
Nor Thy delights deny us,
Whose hearts to Thee draw nigh.

O stream of love past telling,
O purest fountain welling
From out the Savior’s side!
We faint with thirst; revive us,
Of Thine abundance give us,
And all we need provide.

O Jesus, by Thee bidden,
We here adore Thee,
Hidden in forms of bread and wine.
Grant when the veil is riven,
We may behold, in heaven,
Thy countenance divine.
O esca viatorum,
O panis angelorum,
O manna coelitum,
Esurientes ciba,
Dulcedine non priva
Corda quaerentium,
Corda quaerentium.

2. O lympha, fons amoris,
Qui puro Salvatoris
E corde profluis
Te sitientes pota,
Haec sola nostra vota,
His una sufficis,
His una sufficis.

3. O Jesu, Tuum vultum,
Quem colimus occultum
Sub panis specie,
Fac, ut remoto velo
Post libera in caelo
Cernamus facie,
Cernamus facie.

(Digression on feminist translations. Usually, attempts to eliminate the hated words man, men, he, him, his etc. from Scripture and hymns  leads to bad and sometimes absurd English. The older translation of O esca viatorum in the 1940 Hymnal was O food of men wayfaring, an exact translation of viatorum: via -way, masculine plural –orum. It fits the meter, but is not very good English. From feminist motives, it was changed to to pilgrims given, but I must confess this is a rare, if not unique, example of an improvement. A wayfarer may be a wander (I am a wayfaring stranger), but a pilgrim is on a way, The Way, El Camino, and has a goal.)

The melody is O Welt, ich muβ dich lassen, itself a contrafactum of Innsbruck, ich muβ dich lassen, by

Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450 – 1517)

He was a Nederlandish composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of  Josquin des Prez, his influence was especially pronounced in Germany, due to the connection he maintained with the Hapsburg court. He was the first significant master of the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style who both lived in German-speaking areas, and whose music was widely distributed there. It was through him that the polyphonic style of the Netherlands became widely accepted in Germany, making possible the further development of contrapuntal music there. His best known composition is Innbruck, ich muss dich lassen.

Here is Flos Campi singing O Welt, ich muβ dich lassen, the Lutheran contarfactum; here is (are?) the Vocafonia ; here is a male choir from Baltimore’s St. Paul’s School, Brooklandville, singing in Old St. Paul’s on Charles St; here are the Wiltener Sängerknaben.

A Digression on Contrafacta

The absence of contrast between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ styles of music in the Middle Ages] can be shown simply by the observation that a secular song, if given a set of sacred words, could serve as sacred music, and vice versa. Only recently has it been recognized how frequently such interchange took place, and the more we learn about medieval music, the more important it becomes. The practice of borrowing a song from one sphere and making it suitable for use in the other by the substitution of words is known as “parody” or contrafactum.’

The contrafactum (plural contrafacta) may operate in either direction: to provide pious words to fit a secular song, or profane words to fit a religious song. It may involve ‘parody’ in the literary sense, offering purposeful variations on the words of the original song, but sometimes there may be only a more general contrast in content between the two songs, or even no obvious relationship at all between them. Although in some cases it is possible to tell which came first, the religious or the secular version, in others it is less clear in which direction the process operated.

Examples of this can be found particularly in Goliardic verse, which sometimes parodies the forms of hymns and the church services; for instance, the first line of the sixth-century Latin hymn for Prime, Iam lucis orto sidere, which celebrates control of both the emotions and the appetites (potus cibique parcitas, ‘restraint in food and drink’), is borrowed to introduce a twelfth-century drinking song:

Iam lucis orto sidere
Deum precamur supplices
ut in diurnis actibus
Nos servet a nocentibus . . . Now at the dawning of the day
To God as suppliants we pray
That from our daily round he may
All harmful beings keep away . . .
becomes:
Iam lucis orto sidere
statim oportet bibere;
Bibamus nunc egregie
Et rebibamus hodie . . . Now at the dawning of the day
We must start drinking straight away;
Let’s drink now till the drink’s all gone,
And have another later on . . .

This kind of contrafactum becomes commoner in the later Middle Ages; it is particularly associated, from the early thirteenth century onwards, with the work of the friars, who often supplied pious words to be sung to popular secular tunes (a device later to be taken over, for similar reasons, by the Salvation Army, on the principle ‘Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?’). St Francis described his followers as joculatores Dei, ‘God’s minstrels’. An example of this can be found in the Red Book of Ossory(Bishop’s Palace, Kilkenny), which includes 60 Latin lyrics in two hands of the late C14, accompanied by a note:

Attende, lector, qu[o]d Episcopus Ossoriensis fecit istas cantilenas pro vicariis Ecclesie Cathedralis sacerdotibus et clericis suis ad cantandum in magnis festis et solaciis, ne guttura eorum et ora Deo sanctificata polluantur cantilenis teatralibus, turpibus et secularibus, et cum sint cantatores prouideant sibi de notis conuenientibus secundum quod dictamina requirunt.
Be advised, reader, that the Bishop of Ossory [the Franciscan friar Richard de Ledrede, d. 1360] has made these songs for the vicars of the cathedral church, for the priests, and for the clerks, to be sung on the important holidays and at celebrations in order that their throats and mouths, consecrated to God, may not be polluted by songs which are lewd, secular, and associated with revelry, and, since they are trained singers, let them provide themselves with suitable tunes according to what these sets of words require.

Twenty five of the Latin lyrics are on the Nativity or related themes, 11 on Easter and the Resurrection, one on the Annunciation, the rest on various devotional topics. Some of them are accompanied by introductory fragments of English or French verse, whose form (though not content) they seem to echo: e.g. the first line of the popular dance-song ‘Maiden on the moor’ (‘A maiden stayed on the moor for a full week and a day . . .’) prefaces a lyric on the Nativity:

Maiden in the mor lay,
in the mor lay,
seuenyst[es] fulle,
seuenist[es] fulle.
Maiden in the mor lay–
in the mor lay–
seuenistes fulle,
[seuenistes fulle,
fulle] ant a day… Peperit virgo,
Virgo regia,
Mater orphanorum,
Mater orphanorum,
Peperit virgo,
Virgo regia,
Mater orphanorum,
mater orphanorum,
Plena gracia… A virgin gave birth,
A royal virgin,
Mother of orphans,
Mother of orphans,
A virgin gave birth,
A royal virgin,
Mother of orphans,
Mother of orphans,
Full of grace…

Good King Wenceslaus was set to the the spring carol Tempus adest floridum; What Child is This to a ballad about a woman of dubious virtue –Greensleeves; the Star Spangled Banner to a drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven [try hitting those high notes after 6 glasses of port]. Contemporary composers use it. “Come to Me,” also known as “Fantine’s Death,” is sung in the first act of Les Miserables. “On My Own,” the contrafactum of “Come to Me,” is performed during the second act of the show.  “Comme d’habitude,” music by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, has original French lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibaut,  and was rewritten as “My Way” with English lyrics by Paul Anka.  In Japan, the Scots song “Auld Lang Syne” has a new set of words in the song “Hotaru no hikari” (lit. “The light of the firefly”), which is used at graduation ceremonies (inscrutable). There are of course many ad hoc parodies when students discover that O my darling Clementine has the same meter as Tantum ergo.

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Father, we thank thee who hast planted is a translation by the Episcopal poet and presbyter Francis Bland Tucker (1896—1984; UVA 1914) of a portion of the Didache (c. 110 AD) that describes the manner of celebrating the Eucharist: “concerning the broken bread. We thank thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou hast made known unto us through Jesus thy Son; to thee be the glory forever. As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and after it had been brought together became one, so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth unto thy kingdom.” Some scholars think these prayers may even predate many of the writings of the New Testament.

Here at St. John’s, Detroit, before a Tigers game.

Father, we thank Thee who hast planted
Thy holy name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus, Thy Son, to us imparts.
Thou, Lord, didst make all for Thy pleasure,
Didst give us food for all our days,
Giving in Christ the Bread eternal;
Thine is the pow’r, be Thine the praise.

Watch o’er Thy Church, O Lord, in mercy,
Save it from evil, guard it still,
Perfect it in Thy love, unite it,
Cleansed and conformed unto Thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
Was in this broken bread made one,
So from all lands Thy Church be gather’d
Into Thy kingdom by Thy Son.

Francis Bland Tucker (1885-1984)  was an important figure in hymnody. He was educated at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Theological Seminary. Beginning in 1945, he was Rector of Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia. Tucker served on the two commissions, forty-two years apart, that revised hymnals of the Episcopal Church. He worked on the 1940 Hymnal and the 1982 Hymnal which includes 17 of Tucker’s contributions. Among these are the texts, Oh, Gracious Light (Hymns 25-26), Father, We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted (Hymns 302-303), and his original text, Our Father, by Whose Name (Hymn 587). Only John Mason Neale is credited with more items in the 1982 Hymnal.  Tucker was also a theological adviser to the commission that produced the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

A collateral descendant of George Washington, Tucker’s parents were Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Episcopal Bishop of Southern Virginia, and Anna Maria Washington who was one of the last children to be born at Mount Vernon. Francis Bland is the brother of Henry St. George Tucker (1874–1959), 19th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and descendant of St. George Tucker (1752–1827), lawyer, legal scholar, state and federal judge for whom the St. George Tucker House in Colonial Williamsburg is named.

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Anthems

Caro mea vere est cibus: et sanguis meus vere est potus. Qui manducat meam carnem et bibit meum sanguinem in me manet, et ego in illo.

My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

(Here sung in the Sistine Chapel)

by

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)

Guerrero’s early musical education was with his older brother Pedro. At the age of 17 he was appointed maestro de capilla (singing master, i.e. music director) at Jaén Cathedral. A few years later he accepted a position in Seville. During this time he was much in demand as a singer and composer, establishing an exceptional reputation before his thirtieth birthday; in addition he published several collections of his music abroad, an unusual event for a young composer.

After several decades of working and traveling throughout Spain and Portugal, sometimes in the employ of emperor Maximilian II,  he went to Italy for a year (1581–1582) where he published two books of his music. After returning to Spain for several years, he decided to travel to the Holy Land, which he finally was able to do in 1589. On the return trip his ship was twice attacked by pirates, who threatened his life, stole his money, and held him for ransom. He was able to return to Spain; unfortunately he had no money, and endured a series of misfortunes, including some time spent in prison for debt. At last his old employer at Seville Cathedral extricated Guerrero and he resumed working for them. Of all the Spanish Renaissance composers, he lived and worked the most in Spain. \

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O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur; recolitur memoria passionis ejus; mens impletur gratia; et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

O sacred banquet, wherein Christ is received; the memorial of his passion is renewed; the soul is filled with grace; and a pledge of future glory is given to us.

(Here sung by the choir of Clare College, Cambridge)

Jan_Pietersz._Sweelinck_LACMA_M.88.91.370

 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)

Sweelinck started work at 15 and worked in the same church (where his grandfather and uncle had been organists) his whole life. On his death his son took over his job.

According to Cornelis Plemp, a pupil and friend of Sweelinck’s, he started his 44-year career as organist of the Oude Kerk in 1577, when he was 15.  Sweelinck’s first published works date from around 1592–94: three volumes of chansons, the last of which is the only remaining volume published in 1594. Sweelinck then set to publishing psalm settings, aiming to set the entire Psalter. These works appeared in four large volumes published in 1604, 1613, 1614 and 1621, teh year of his death.  His popularity as a composer, performer and teacher increased steadily during his lifetime. Contemporaries nicknamed him Orpheus of Amsterdam and even the city authorities frequently brought important visitors to hear Sweelinck’s improvisations.

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Communion Service

 by

Harold Darke (1888-1976)

Harold Edwin Darke was born in London, October 29, 1888, and died in Cambridge, November 28, 1976. Darke received his formal training at the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, and at Oxford. He had a world-wide reputation as one of the finest organists of his era. He held positions at Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead (1906) and subsequently at St. James, Paddington. During his fifty years (1916-66) as organist at St. Michael’s, Cornhill (London), his weekly recitals, which included the entire organ works of Bach, made him a city institution. In 1919 he founded the Saint Michael’s Singers and remained its conductor until 1966. In his choral festivals he presented not only established masterworks, but championed the music of little-known contemporary composers such as Vaughan Williams and Charles Hubert Parry. Darke’s numerous compositions are mostly, but by no means exclusively, choral and organ works. They are generally serious and reflective in character. His most famous work is the Christmas song In the bleak midwinter.

Here is the Sanctus from his Communion Service in F, sung at Baltimore’s St. Michael and All Angels Church sometime in the 1950s.

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Mount Calvary Music, Trinity Sunday 2017

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The Trinity, by St. Andrei Rublev

Mount Calvary Church

Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Trinity Sunday 2017

Rigaudon – Andre Campra (1660-1744)

Hymns

Come, thou almighty King

Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty

Anthems

God so loved the world by John Stainer (1840-1901)

Benedicta sit by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

Voluntary No. 1 – G.F. Handel (1685-1759)

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HYMNS

Come, thou almighty King by the prolific composer anonymous dates from before 1757, when it was published in a leaflet and bound into the 1757 edition of George Whitefield’s Collection of Hymns for Social Worship. The text appears to be patterned after the British national anthem, God Save the King.

At first, this hymn was sung to the same tune as “God Save the King.” On the American side of the Atlantic, we use the same tune for “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

Supposedly: During the American Revolution, while British troops were occupying New York City and appeared to be winning the war, a group of English soldiers went to church one Sunday morning in Long Island. The setting was tense. The occupiers demanded the congregation sing, “God Save The King” in honor of King George III. The organist was forced to begin playing the tune – but instead of singing “God Save the King,” the congregation broke out in “Come, Thou Almighty King.” Point made.

Here is a lively version, which you probably will never see at Mount Calvary, although it would get the attention of the children. Here are somewhat more subdued Presbyterians.

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Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest by George Wallace Briggs, celebrates the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Stanzas 1 and 4 allude to the part of the Emmaus story (Luke 24:28-35) in which the two disciples invite Jesus to be their guest, but then Jesus becomes their host. Stanza 2 focuses on our partaking of the sacrament and stanzas 3 and 4 on the oneness we share with all believers in this world and in heaven.

Briggs was a Canon of Worcester Cathedral and a distinguished British hymn writers and hymnologist. Six of his hymns appear in the Episcopal Hymnal of 1940. He was the author of one of the prayers used at the time of the famous meeting of Churchill and Roosevelt on H.M.S. Prince of Wales in 1941 when the Atlantic Charter was framed.

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Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty by Reginald Heber. In 325 A.D., Church leaders convened in the town of Nicaea in Bithynia to formulate a consensus of belief and practice amongst Christians. What resulted was the Nicene Creed, a document passed on through the ages as one of the pillars of church doctrine. The primary function of this creed was to establish a firm belief in the Trinity, countering the heresy of Arius, who believed that Jesus was not fully divine. It was this creed that inspired Reginald Heber to write this great hymn of praise to the Triune God, with the intent that the hymn be sung before or after the creed was recited in a service, and on Trinity Sunday – eight weeks after Easter. The tune, composed by John B. Dykes for Heber’s text, is also titled NICAEA in recognition of Heber’s text. The words evoke a sense of awe at the majesty of God, and call on all of creation – humans, saints and angels, and all living things – to praise the Godhead three-in-one.

Here are the Mormons singing it, with significant alterations in the text: Deity instead of Trinity.

Reginald Heber , D.D. (1783—1826),

He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, was Vicar of Hodnet, 1807; Bishop of Calcutta, 1823; and died at Trichinopoly, India, April 3, 1826. The gift of versification shewed itself in Heber’s childhood; and his Newdigate prize poem Palestine, which was read to Scott at breakfast in his rooms at Brazenose, Oxford, and owed one of its most striking passages to Scott’s suggestion, is almost the only prize poem that has won a permanent place in poetical literature. His sixteen years at Hodnet, where he held a halfway position between a parson and a squire, were marked not only by his devoted care of his people, as a parish priest, but by literary work. He was the friend of Milman, Gifford, Southey, and others, in the world of letters, endeared to them by his candour, gentleness, “salient playfulness,” as well as learning and culture. During this portion of his life he had often had a lurking fondness for India, had traced on the map Indian journeys, and had been tempted to wish himself Bishop of Calcutta. When he was forty years old the literary life was closed by his call to the Episcopate. No memory of Indian annals is holier than that of the three years of ceaseless travel, splendid administration, and saintly enthusiasm, of his tenure of the see of Calcutta. He ordained the first Christian native—Christian David. His first visitation ranged through Bengal, Bombay, and Ceylon; and at Delhi and Lucknow he was prostrated with fever. His second visitation took him through the scenes of Schwartz’s labours in Madras Presidency to Trichinopoly, where on April 3,1826, he confirmed forty-two persons, and he was deeply moved by the impression of the struggling mission, so much so that “he showed no appearance of bodily exhaustion.” On his return from the service

”He retired into his own room, and according to his invariable custom, wrote on the back of the address on Confirmation ‘Trichinopoly, April 3, 1826.’ This was his last act, for immediately on taking off his clothes, he went into a large cold bath, where he had bathed the two preceding mornings, but which was now the destined agent of his removal to Paradise. Half an hour after, his servant, alarmed at his long absence, entered the room and found him a lifeless corpse.”

Heber’s hymns were all written during the Hodnet period. Even the great missionary hymn, “From Greenland’s icy mountains,” notwithstanding the Indian allusions (“India’s coral strand,” “Ceylon’s isle”), was written before he received the offer of Calcutta. The touching funeral hymn, “Thou art gone to the grave,” was written on the loss of his first babe, which was a deep grief to him. Some of the hymns were published (1811-16) in the Christian Observer, the rest were not published till after his death. They formed part of a ms. collection made for Hodnet (but not published), which contained, besides a few hymns from older and special sources, contributions by Milman. The first idea of the collection appears in a letter in 1809 asking for a copy of the Olney Hymns, which he “admired very much.” The plan was to compose hymns connected with the Epistles and Gospels, to be sung after the Nicene Creed. He was the first to publish sermons on the Sunday services (1822), and a writer in The Guardian has pointed out that these efforts of Heber were the germs of the now familiar practice, developed through the Christian Year (perhaps following Ken’s Hymns on the Festivals), and by Augustus Hare, of welding together sermon, hymnal, and liturgy. Heber tried to obtain from Archbishop Manners Sutton and the Bishop of London (1820) authorization of his ms. collection of hymns by the Church, enlarging on the “powerful engine” which hymns were among Dissenters, and the irregular use of them in the church, which it was impossible to suppress, and better to regulate. The authorization was not granted. The lyric spirit of Scott and Byron passed into our hymns in Heber’s verse; imparting a fuller rhythm to the older measures, as illustrated by “Oh, Saviour, is Thy promise fled,” or the martial hymn, “The Son of God goes forth to war;” pressing into sacred service the freer rhythms of contemporary poetry (e.g. “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning”; “God that madest earth and heaven”); and aiming at consistent grace of literary expression.. Their beauties and faults spring from this modern spirit. They have not the scriptural strength of our best early hymns, nor the dogmatic force of the best Latin ones. They are too flowing and florid, and the conditions of hymn composition are not sufficiently understood. But as pure and graceful devotional poetry, always true and reverent, they are an unfailing pleasure. The finest of them is that majestic anthem, founded on the rhythm of the English Bible, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” The greatest evidence of Heber’s popularity as a hymnwriter, and his refined taste as a compiler, is found in the fact that the total contents of his ms. collection which were given in his posthumous Hymns written and adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year. London, J. Murray, 1827; which included 57 hymns by Heber, 12 by Milman, and 29 by other writers, are in common in Great Britain and America at the present time. [Rev. H. Leigh Bennett, M.A.]

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ANTHEMS 

God so loved the world byJohn Stainer (1840-1901)

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoso believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

Sung at St. Paul’s Cathedral

John Stainer (1840 – 1901) was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today, was very popular during his lifetime. His work as choir trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford.

Stainer was born in Southwark, London in 1840, the son of a cabinet maker. He became a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral when aged ten and was appointed to the position of organist at St Michael’s College, Tenbury at the age of sixteen. He later became organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently organist at St Paul’s Cathedral. When he retired due to his poor eyesight and deteriorating health, he returned to Oxford to become Professor of Music at the university. He died unexpectedly while on holiday in Italy in 1901.

Benedicta sit by

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas atque indivisa Unitas confitebimur ei quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam. Alleluia. Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum Sancto Spiritu.

Blessed be the holy Trinity, and undivided Unity: we will give glory to Him, because He hath shown His mercy to us. Alleluia. We bless the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit

Sung by Kiwis

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Mount Calvary Music: Pentecost 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Pentecost

June 4, 2017

Hymns

Hail thee, festival day!

Father, we thank Thee who hast planted

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest

Anthems

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, Eric Spengler

Factus est repente, Eric Spengler

Common

An Anglican Folk Mass, Martin Shaw

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Venantius reading his poetry to Queen Radegund, Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The refrain of Hail thee, festival day! comes from the 20th 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.

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed the tune Salve 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.

Here at St. John’s, Detroit, is the Pentecost section of Hail thee festival day.

___________________

Father, we thank thee who hast planted is a translation by the Episcopal poet and presbyter Francis Bland Tucker (1896—1984; UVA 1914) of a portion of the Didache (c. 110 AD) that describes the manner of celebrating the Eucharist: “concerning the broken bread. We thank thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou hast made known unto us through Jesus thy Son; to thee be the glory forever. As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and after it had been brought together became one, so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth unto thy kingdom.” Some scholars think these prayers may even predate many of the writings of the New Testament.

Again at St. John’s, Detroit, before a Tigers game. A slower and more delicate version.

F. Bland Tucker

Francis Bland Tucker is an important figure in hymnody. He was educated at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Theological Seminary. Beginning in 1945, he was Rector of Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia. Tucker served on the two commissions, forty-two years apart, that revised hymnals of the Episcopal Church. He worked on the 1940 Hymnal. The 1982 Hymnal which includes 17 of Tucker’s contributions. Among these are the texts, Oh, Gracious Light (Hymns 25-26), Father, We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted (Hymns 302-303), and his original text, Our Father, by Whose Name (Hymn 587). Only John Mason Neale is credited with more items in the 1982 Hymnal.  Tucker was also a theological advisor to the commission that produced the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

A collateral descendant of George Washington, Tucker’s parents were Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Episcopal Bishop of Southern Virginia, and Anna Maria Washington who was one of the last children to be born at Mount Vernon.

Francis Bland is the brother of Henry St. George Tucker (1874–1959), 19th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and descendant of St. George Tucker (1752–1827), lawyer, legal scholar, state and federal judge for whom the St. George Tucker House in Colonial Williamsburg is named.

__________________

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest is a translation of Veni creator spiritus, generally attributed to Rabanus Maurus (776—856). Of him, Pope Bendict XVI says “In Rabanus Maurus…is shown an extraordinary awareness of the need to involve, in the experience of faith, not only the mind and the heart but also the senses through those other aspects of aesthetic taste and human sensitivity that lead man to benefit from the truth with his whole self, ‘mind, soul, and body.’ This is important: faith is not only thought but also touches the whole of our being.”

___________________

Anthems

Eric Spengler has composed two original pieces for Mount Calvary for Pentecost.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, a setting of the sequence for Pentecost

Veni Sancte Spiritus et emitte caelitus lucis tuae radium. Veni pater pauperum, veni dator munerum, veni lumen cordium.

2) Consolator optime, dulcis hospes animae, dulce refrigerium. In labore requies, in aestu temperies, in fletu solacium.

3) O lux beatissima, reple cordis intima tuorum fidelium. Sine tuo numine nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium.

4) Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est aridum, sana quod est saucium. Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est rigidum, rege quod est devium.

5) Da tuis fidelibus in te confidentibus sacrum septenarium. Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium. Amen. Alleluia.

Come, Holy Spirit, and send down from heaven the ray of your light. Come, father of the poor, come, giver of gifts, come, light of the hearts.

2) Best consoler, sweet host of the soul, sweet refresher. Rest in work, cooling in heat, comfort in crying.

3) O most blessed light, fill the innermost hearts of your faithful. Without your power nothing is in man, nothing innocent.

4) Clean what is dirty, water what is dry, heal what is wounded. Bend what is rigid, heat what is cold, lead what has gone astray.

5) Grant to your faithful who trust in you, your sevenfold holy gift. Grant us the reward of virtue, grant us final salvation, grant us eternal joy.

and

Factus est repente, a setting of the Communion antiphon for Pentecost

Factus est repente de coelo sonus, tamquam advenientis spiritus vehementis ubi erant sedentes, alleluia; et repleti sunt omnes Spiritu Sancto, loquentes magnalia Dei, alleluia, alleluia.

Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming where they were sitting, alleluia; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking the wonderful works of God, alleluia, alleluia

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An Anglican Folk Mass, Martin Shaw

Here is the Creed as sung at Chichester Cathedral.

Martin Edward Fallas Shaw (1875 – 1958) was an English composer, conductor and (in his early life) theatre producer. His over 300 published works include songs, hymns, carols, oratorios, several instrumental works, a congregational mass setting (the Anglican Folk Mass) and four operas including a ballad opera.

He was the son of the Bohemian and eccentric James Shaw, composer of church music and organist of Hampstead Parish Church. He was the elder brother of the composer and influential educator Geoffrey Shaw and the actor Julius Shaw, whose career was cut short by the First World War – he was killed in March 1918. He studied under Stanford at the Royal College of Music, together with a generation of composers that included Holst, Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. He then embarked upon a career as a theatrical producer, composer and conductor, the early years of which he described as “a long period of starving along”.  However, he began his career as an organist, serving at Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead, from 1895 to 1903.

Working with Percy Dearmer, Martin was music editor of The English Carol Book (1913, 1919) and, with Ralph Vaughan Williams, of Songs of Praise (1925, 1931) and The Oxford Book of Carols (1928). His tune Little Cornard is sung to Hills of the North Rejoice, and Marching is sung to Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow. While doing research for the English Hymnal (1906) in the British Library, he came upon the traditional Gaelic hymn-tune Bunessan in L. McBean’s Songs and Hymns of the Gael, published in 1900. However, the tune was not included in the English Hymnal. It was used instead in the second edition of Songs of Praise (1931), set to the poem Morning Has Broken, which Martin Shaw commissioned specially from his old friend Eleanor Farjeon. This tune and words became a No. 1 hit for Cat Stevens in 1972. Martin Shaw also noted down the Czech carol Rocking and included it in The Oxford Book of Carols.

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The Sun Dance and the Son of God

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Natural religion contains many anticipations of the true religion. Man yearned for a savior from the darkness and death that reigns over this world, and that yearning was expressed in myths, which were fulfilled in Christ.

Inequality has become a leitmotif of contemporary politics.

The enormous gap between multi-billionaires and those who get by on a dollar a day is disturbing.

I am dubious about state control. Billionaires don’t have their wealth in pools of gold coins in their basement, which they dive into like Scrooge McDuck.

They invest the vast portion of their wealth in businesses which provide employment, and in general the market, rather than the state, is better mechanism to decide where to invest, as the fate of the Soviet Union showed. China has moved hundreds of millions out of poverty through market-determined investment.

But still, the vast discrepancy in wealth and income is disturbing, and other societies have felt the same way about great differences in wealth among their members.

We once attended a kachina dance at a Hopi pueblo. It was held in the plaza of the pueblo. Native Americans of all ages lined the plaza, the adults and children in chairs on the ground, the teenagers on the roof. There were a handful of Anglos. There was a pile of something in the center surmounted by a spruce tree.

Scores of Corn Boy kachinas began milling into the plaza, and formed a double line around the plaza. They began to sing and dance in a restrained and elegant fashion. The song was strophic and melodious to the Western ear. Later I asked what they were singing. It was a prayer for rain and crops and health, first for the Hopis and then for the whole world, because Hopi, as is well known, is  the center place, the axis of the world, and has the responsibility to pray for the whole world.

Many think the spiral represents the search for the Center Place

After an hour or so the dance broke up and the kachinas began taking items from the pile. It was a pile of food: baskets of staples for the grandmothers, cookies for the children. The distribution became more and more energetic. The kachinas began tossing muffins to people of the rooftop: food was raining from heaven. After that, the kachinas reformed their lines and sang and danced for another hour. After the dance, everyone, including we Anglos, were invited into houses to feast.

This was a thanksgiving dance. Hopis, when they have a great prayer request or a thanksgiving to make, sponsor one of these dances. In the past they were often held in late winter, when some families’ supplies were running short, and were a means to distribute food. But the distribution was done not directly, but through the agency of the kachinas, the guardian spirits, who were themselves agents of the Creator.

Among the Plains Indians the Sun Dance was a prayer of petition. Human beings, especially men, have often felt that prayer must be accompanied by real physical sacrifice to demonstrate its sincerity. Fasting, continence, pilgrimage, beatings often accompany prayer, especially among men. The Sun Dance is an extreme manifestation of this:

Those who had pledged to endure the Sun Dance generally did so in fulfillment of a vow or as a way of seeking spiritual power or insight. Supplicants began dancing at an appointed hour and continued intermittently for several days and nights; during this time they neither ate nor drank. In some tribes supplicants also endured ritual self-mortification beyond fasting and exertion; in others such practices were thought to be self-aggrandizing. When practiced, self-mortification was generally accomplished through piercing: mentors or ritual leaders inserted two or more slim skewers or piercing needles through a small fold of the supplicant’s skin on the upper chest or upper back; the mentor then used long leather thongs to tie a heavy object such as a buffalo skull to the skewers. A dancer would drag the object along the ground until he succumbed to exhaustion or his skin tore free. Among some tribes the thongs were tied to the centre pole, and the supplicant either hung from or pulled on them until free. Piercing was endured by only the most committed individuals, and, as with the rest of the ritual, it was done to ensure tribal well-being as well as to fulfill the supplicant’s individual vow.

 

Typically, the sun dance is a grueling ordeal for the dancers, a physical and spiritual test that they offer in sacrifice for their people. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, young men dance around a pole to which they are fastened by “rawhide thongs pegged through the skin of their chests.”

While not all sun dance ceremonies include piercing, the object of the sun dance is to offer personal sacrifice for the benefit of one’s family and community. The dancers fast for many days, in the open air and whatever weather occurs.

Anglos were horrified by this ritual and banned it.

In God’s Red Sun,  Louis Warren  describes another important part of the Sun Dance ritual and the consequence of the ban:

…the ban ramped up social friction. A Sun Dance was usually accompanied by a large-scale transfer of goods from richer Lakotas to poorer members of the tribe. Each year’s dance was sponsored by a person who had taken a vow to Wi [the Sun god] to host the ceremony, often in return from deliverance from danger or illness. As the date for the dance approached, the sponsor sacrificed all of his property by surrendering it to the needy. Other wealthy people also gave generously to the poor as the ceremony progressed. Each gift of horses, buffalo robes, or richly beaded cloth from rich to poor encouraged the spirits to be similarly kind to Lakotas, or as Lakotas put it, “to take pity” on them. This, the “vast amount” of wealth that changed hands during the ritual eased tensions among Lakotas and bound them together in reciprocal obligation.

There are striking resemblances to the Todah, the thanksgiving sacrifice of the Jews for deliverance from death or danger, and its fulfillment in the Eucharist. Paul in 2 Corinthians 8 places Christian’s help for one another in the context of the gift that God made of Himself:

 We want you to know, brethren, about the grace of God which has been shown in the churches of Macedonia, 2 for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. 3 For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, 4 begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— 5 and this, not as we expected, but first they gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God. 6 Accordingly we have urged Titus that as he had already made a beginning, he should also complete among you this gracious work. 7 Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in your love for us—see that you excel in this gracious work also.

8 I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. 10 And in this matter I give my advice: it is best for you now to complete what a year ago you began not only to do but to desire, 11 so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. 12 For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he has not. 13 I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, 14 but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality. 15 As it is written, “He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack.” (RSV)

Paul emphasizes that this is not a command, which a state redistribution of wealth would be, but a counsel to a generosity motivated by thanksgiving for the generosity that God has shown to us. This is the Christian fulfillment of the intuition that  motivate Hopi and Lakota to their rituals of sacrifice and sharing.  Paul gives a counsel, not a command, but I am sure he would say it would be shameful if Christians were outdone in generosity to one another by pagans who have not heard the Gospel.

 

 

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Sister Cathy

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Most Catholics in Baltimore managed to shrug off the revelations of sexual abuse by the clergy and the cover-ups by the hierarchy. They didn’t read the books, they scanned the newspaper articles and were upset for a few seconds and then stopped reading. The hierarchy made some pretext of stopping the abuse, and then continued its policy of obfuscation and denial.

But the Netflix series “The Keepers” seems finally to have gotten the attention of those who didn’t want to believe how bad things are. The murder of Sister Cathy was entwined with the stories of sexual abuse at Archbishop Keough, a girls’ high school in Baltimore.

As reviewers have noticed, the series is not like other True Crime stories, because this series focuses on the victims, and the victims of sexual abuse by Father Maskell are still alive and can tell their stories.

Germans managed to construct a protective barrier between themselves and the Holocaust until the soap opera “Shoah” pierced that barrier and made the Germans start to come to terms with what their nation had done to the Jews. Perhaps “The Keepers” will do the same for Catholics.

Someone told me that he thought Archbishop Lori of Baltimore is a holy and humble man. I am no judge of his soul, but:

Ryan White, who made the series “The Keepers,“ asked the Archdiocese of Baltimore for its file of the abuser Father Maskell. The Archdiocese of Baltimore (that is, Archbishop Lori) is still refusing to release its file on Maskell, even though making the file public might help solve Sister Cathy’s murder. Its excuse is that the file contains personal information that cannot be legally released:

“Archdiocesan records related to Maskell are confidential, and Archdiocesan policy and state law would preclude us from disclosing much of the information in them as they include confidential personal information (e.g. names of alleged sexual abuse victims), personnel records, health records, attorney-client communications, personally identifying information (such as social security numbers), etc.”

But, of course the personal information could be redacted, that is, blacked out; this is standard procedure in releasing court files.

The second reason the Archdiocese gave for not releasing the file is that the file is confidential, which means that it is not its policy to release the file. That is, the Archdiocese (again, Archbishop Lori) is saying that it is not releasing the file because it does not want to release the file—even though it might help solve a murder.

Perhaps the Archdiocese does not want the murder solved because it fears that Maskell was indeed involved in it. Or perhaps the file simply shows the incompetence and carelessness of the Archdiocese in investigating allegations of sexual abuse. As “The Keepers” shows, incompetence and carelessness were also present in the law enforcement agencies that were supposed to be investigating the abuse. No one really cared much that girls were being abused or that Sister Cathy was murdered. They were just little people, not like state officials or bishops, who are the only people who really matter.

For other clerical murder cases, see The Murder of Irene Garza and the case of Ryan Erickson.

 

 

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Mount Calvary Music, May 7, 2017: Easter IV

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From the Catacombs of Priscilla

Mount Calvary Church

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Fourth Sunday of Easter

The Good Shepherd

May 7, 2017

Hymns

The King of Love my shepherd is

Be joyful, Mary, heavenly Queen

I know that my Redeemer lives

Anthems

Psalm 23, Herbert Howells

Ego sum resurrectione, Hans Leo Hassler

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Willan

Credo, Missa de Angelis

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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).

The words of this hymn are often subjected ot “modernization,” a process that frequently obscures the meaning the poet intended. For example, a 1994 Lutheran hymnal   changes

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

to

You spread a table in my sight,
A banquet here bestowing;
Your oil of welcome, my delight;
My cup is overflowing!

The clear allusion to the Eucharistic chalice has been almost completely obscures, and the deep emotion of “transports of delight” toned down and transferred to oil, which might be a reference to the oil used at baptism, if Lutherans use, it, but it is very obscure.

On a personal note, I have used the hymn at the funeral masses I have arranged for member of my family: my mother, my nephew, my sister. I think the hymn combines the sweetness, sadness, and tender trust that we feel when a fellow Christian leaves this life to enter into the presence of the Lord.

We mourn, not as those who have no hope, but we do and should mourn.

When I was walking the Camino de Santiago in 2010, I passed through a pastoral landscape in which shepherds with their staffs were leading flocks of sheep. I sang this hymn, with especial stress on the stanza,

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

On the Camino I had the strong feeling that I was on my way Home; if I could not walk, I would be carried.

_____________________

Be joyful Mary, heavenly Queen is a translation of Regina coeli, iubila, an anonymous 17th 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 me 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

Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, Herbert Howells

Herbert Howells (1892—1983) was best known as a composer of Anglican church music. Psalm 23 is from his Requiem.

Herbert Howells

In September 1935 Howells’ placid existence was abruptly shattered when his nine-year-old son Michael contracted polio during a family holiday and died in London three days later. Howells was deeply affected and continued to commemorate the event until the end of his life.  Much of Howells’ subsequent music shows the influence of this loss. He began the Requiem in 1932, but more and more associated his work on it with Michael’s death.

Michael’s grave at Twigworth

Howells’ music is much more complex than other choral music of the period, most of which still followed in the Austro-German tradition that had dominated English music for two centuries. Long, unfolding melodies are seamlessly woven into the overall textures; the harmonic language is modal, chromatic, often dissonant and deliberately ambiguous. The overall style is free-flowing, impassioned and impressionistic, all of which gives Howells’ music a distinctive visionary quality.

Here is the Imperial College Chamber Choir singing Psalm 23.

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Ego sum resurrectio, Hans Leo Hassler

Ego sum resurrectio et vita. Qui credit in me
etiam si mortuus fuerit, vivet.
Et omnis qui vivit et credit in me, non morietur in aeternum.

I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me,
although he be dead, shall live:
And every one that liveth and believeth in me shall not die for ever.

This motet is No. 11 in Hassler’s Cantiones sacrae de festis praecipuis totius anni. . . , published at Augsburg in 1591.

Hans Leo Hassler

Hans Leo Hassler (1564- 1612) was the first German composer of the Renaissance who went to Italy to continue studies; he studied in Venive inder Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni’s uncle, He returned to Germany, where he was an expert organist as well as a composer. Hassler’s influence was one of the reasons for the Italian domination over German music and for the common trend of German musicians finishing their education in Italy. Though Hassler was Protestant, he wrote many masses and directed the music for Catholic services in Augsburg.

While in the service of Octavian Fugger, Hassler dedicated both his Cantiones sacrae and a book of masses for four to eight voices to him. Due to the demands of the Catholic patrons, and his own Protestant beliefs, Hassler’s compositions represented a skillful blend of both religions’ music styles that allowed his compositions to function in both contexts Hassler sought to blend the Italian virtuoso style with the traditional style prevalent in Germany. This was accomplished in the chorale motet by employing the thorough bass continuo and including instrumental and solo ornamentation.

We used one of Hassler’s masses at our wedding in St. Matthew’s cathedral in Washington.

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Mount Calvary Music: April 30, 2017

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The disciples recognized Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread

Mount Calvary Church

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Third Sunday of Easter

Emmaus

April 30, 2017

Organ Prelude: Angelus Domini, Vasurto

Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness

Anthems

Venite, comedite by William Byrd

Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli by William Byrd

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Willan

Credo, Missa de Angelis

Organ Postlude: Il Alleluia per Resurrectione, by Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770)

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Hymns

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 refenece 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.

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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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.

  1. Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless
    Thy chosen pilgrim flock
    With manna in the wilderness,
    With water from the rock.2 We would not live by bread alone,
    But by thy word of grace,
    In strength of which we travel on
    To our abiding place.3 Be known to us in breaking bread,
    But do not then depart;
    Saviour, abide with us, and spread
    Thy table in our heart.4 Lord, sup with us in love divine;
    Thy Body and thy Blood,
    That living bread, that heavenly wine,
    Be our immortal food.to us.

The tune is St. Agnes by John Bacchus Dykes. Here it is sung at Trinity Church on Wall Street.

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.

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Our closing hymn is the Eucharistic hymn, 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) and expresses an intimate relationship between the individual believer and his faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ. Much devotional poetry that conveys an internalized piety was written in the period immediately following the devastation of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). It was translated by Catherine Winkworth in her Lyra Germanica.

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 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 deiner 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.

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, ed.

Here is the Schola Cantorum of St. Peters-in-the-Loop singing the hymn.  Here is the cantata BWV 180.

____________________________

 Anthems

Venite, comedite, from Votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament, by William Byrd

Venite comedite panem meum, et bibite vinum quod miscui vobis.

Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have prepared for you.

Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli, the Alleluia from Votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament during Paschal time, by William Byrd

Alleluia. Cognoverunt discipuli Dominum Jesum in fractione panis. Alleluia. Caro mea vere est cibus, et sanguis meus vere est potus: qui manducat carnem, et bibit meum sanguinem, in me manet, et ego in eo. Alleluia.  

Alleluia. The disciples knew the Lord Jesus in the breaking of bread. Alleluia. My flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me: and I in him. Alleluia.

William Byrd

William Byrd’s (1540-1623) Venite, comedite and Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli are both from his 1607 Gradualia.

As a Catholic in Elizabethan England, Byrd was frequently fined under the recusancy laws, but his talents earned him a place in the Chapel Royal. In the persecutions of Catholics that followed the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, Catholics were increasingly in danger. Nevertheless,  in 1607, although there was serious danger in calling attention to his Catholicism,  Byrd published this cycle of polyphonic Latin propers from the Catholic mass cycle, and prefaced them by saying: “Moreover, in the words themselves (as I have learned from experience) there is such hidden and mysterious power that to a person thinking over divine things, diligently and earnestly turning them over in his mind, the most appropriate measures come, I do not know how, and offer themselves freely to the mind that is neither idle nor inert.”  Both motets contain an emphasis on the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist — the disciples recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread.

Here is the Ensemble Plus Ultra singing Venite, comedite  and Alleluia! cognoverunt discipuli.

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Mount Calvary Music: Thomas Sunday 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Thomas Sunday

April 16, 2017

Hymns

O sons and daughters, let us sing

That Easter day with joy was bright

Christ the Lord is risen today

Anthems

Quia vidisti me

Regina Coeli, Palestrina

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Willan

_____________________________

 

Opening hymn: O sons and daughters is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) of the hymn O filii et filiae by the Franciscan Jean Tisserand (died 1494). 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.

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

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!

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. Discipu lis 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.

____________________

Offertory hymn: 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 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.

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.

AURORA lucis rutilat,
caelum laudibus intonat,
mundus exultans iubilat,
gemens infernus ululat,		 LIGHT’S glittering morn bedecks the sky,
heaven thunders forth its victor cry,
the glad earth shouts its triumph high,
and groaning hell makes wild reply:
Cum rex ille fortissimus,
mortis confractis viribus,
pede conculcans tartara
solvit catena miseros !		 While he, the King of glorious might,
treads down death’s strength in death’s despite,
and trampling hell by victor’s right,
brings forth his sleeping Saints to light.
Ille, qui clausus lapide
custoditur sub milite,
triumphans pompa nobile
victor surgit de funere.		 Fast barred beneath the stone of late
in watch and ward where soldiers wait,
now shining in triumphant state,
He rises Victor from death’s gate.
Solutis iam gemitibus
et inferni doloribus,
<<Quia surrexit Dominus!>>
resplendens clamat angelus.		 Hell’s pains are loosed, and tears are fled;
captivity is captive led;
the Angel, crowned with light, hath said,
‘The Lord is risen from the dead.’
TRISTES erant apostoli
de nece sui Domini,
quem poena mortis crudeli
servi damnarant impii.		 THE APOSTLES‘ hearts were full of pain
for their dear Lord so lately slain:
that Lord his servants’ wicked train
with bitter scorn had dared arraign.
Sermone blando angelus
praedixit mulieribus,
<<In Galilaea Dominus
videndus est quantocius>>		 With gentle voice the Angel gave
the women tidings at the grave;
‘Forthwith your Master shall ye see:
He goes before to Galilee.’
Illae dum pergunt concite
apostolis hoc dicere,
videntes eum vivere
osculant pedes Domini.		 And while with fear and joy they pressed
to tell these tidings to the rest,
their Lord, their living Lord, they meet,
and see his form, and kiss his feet.
Quo agnito discipuli
in Galilaeam propere
pergunt videre faciem
desideratam Domini.		 The Eleven, when they hear, with speed
to Galilee forthwith proceed:
that there they may behold once more
the Lord’s dear face, as oft before.
CLARO PASCHALI gaudio
sol mundo nitet radio,
cum Christum iam apostoli
visu cernunt corporeo.		 IN THIS our bright and Paschal day
the sun shines out with purer ray,
when Christ, to earthly sight made plain,
the glad Apostles see again.
Ostensa sibi vulnera
in Christi carne fulgida,
resurrexisse Dominum
voce fatentur publica.		 The wounds, the riven wounds he shows
in that his flesh with light that glows,
in loud accord both far and nigh
ihe Lord’s arising testify.
Rex Christe clementissime,
tu corda nostra posside,
ut tibi laudes debitas
reddamus omni tempore!		 O Christ, the King who lovest to bless,
do thou our hearts and souls possess;
to thee our praise that we may pay,
to whom our laud is due for aye.

______________________

Closing hymn: Christ the lord is risen today is a translation by Jane Elizabeth Leeson (1807-1882) of the Easter sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, attributed to St. Wipo of Burgundy (c. 1000). The Council of Trent eliminated scores of sequences in the Roman liturgy. This was one of the four that survived.

1 Christ the Lord is risen to-day,
Christians, haste your vows to pay,
Offer ye your praises meet,
At the Paschal Victim’s feet.
For the sheep the Lamb hath bled,
Sinless in the sinner’s stead;
Christ is risen, today we cry;
Now He lives no more to die.

2 Christ, the Victim undefiled,
Man to God hath reconciled,
Whilst in strange and awful strife
Met together Death and Life.
Christians, on this happy day,
Haste with joy your vows to pay:
Christ is risen, to-day we cry;
Now He lives no more to die.

3 Christ, who once for sinners bled,
Now the first-born from the dead,
Throned in endless might and power
Lives and reigns for evermore.
Hail, eternal Hope on high!
Hail, Thou King of victory!
Hail, Thou Prince of Life adored!
Help and save us, gracious Lord!

This is the least objectionable YouTube I could find. It will give a vague idea of the tune.

Here is the Latin original and a translation.

VICTIMAE Paschali
laudes immolent Christiani.		 CHRISTIANS, to the Paschal Victim
offer sacrifice and praise.
Agnus redemit oves:
Christus innocens Patri
reconciliavit
peccatores.		 The sheep are ransomed by the Lamb;
and Christ, the undefiled,
hath sinners
to his Father reconciled.
Mors et vita duello
conflixere mirando:
dux vitae mortuus,
regnat vivus.		 Death with life contended:
combat strangely ended!
Life’s own Champion, slain,
yet lives to reign.
Dic nobis Maria,
Quid vidisti in via?		 Tell us, Mary:
say what thou didst see upon the way.
Sepulcrum Christi viventis,
et gloriam vidi resurgentis:		 The tomb the Living did enclose;
I saw Christ’s glory as He rose!
Angelicos testes,
sudarium et vestes.		 The angels there attesting;
shroud with grave-clothes resting.
Surrexit Christus spes mea:
praecedet suos in Galilaeam.		 Christ, my hope, has risen:
He goes before you into Galilee.
Scimus Christum surrexisse
a mortuis vere:
Tu nobis, victor Rex miserere.
Amen. Alleluia.		 That Christ is truly risen
from the dead we know.
Victorious King, Thy mercy show!
Amen. Alleluia.

Here are Benedictines singing the Gregorian sequence.

Little is known about the translator, Jane Elizabeth (or Eliza) Leeson (1809 – 1881), She was an English hymnist and children’s writer born at Wilford, Nottinghamshire. Late in her life she converted to an unusual form of Catholicism. She died in Leamington, Warwickshire.

According to Sundry Thoughts,

“the christening of Jane Leeson occurred at the (Anglican) Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Nottingham, England, on December 18, 1808, soon after her birth (in 1808) at Wilford, Nottinghamshire.  Eventually she joined the Catholic Apostolic Church (hereafter the CAC in this post).  The CAC started with John MacLeod Campbell, an English Presbyterian minister who, in 1828, began to notice unusual happenings in his congregation.  Some of his parishioners had death-bed conversions, reported heavenly visions, spoke of the imminent return of Christ, and began to prophesy and to speak in tongues.  Edward Irving, another English Presbyterian minister, published approving accounts of the charismata, prompting the Presbyterian Church to defrock him circa 1831 and many to call members of the new CAC “Irvingites.”

The new denomination moved away from its Presbyterian roots quickly.  It agreed with the Church of England doctrinally much of the time, adopted a vernacular-language liturgy with Roman Catholic influences, and affirmed the necessity of all the charismatic gifts.  In 1832, as part of the process of preparing for the supposedly imminent return of Christ, the CAC named twelve apostles.  The death of the last of these apostles in 1901 ended all ordinations in the CAC.  The denomination divided in 1863, resulting in the formation of the New Apostolic Church (hereafter the NAC in this post), which has chosen new apostles to replace deceased ones since its beginning.  The offshoot claims millions of adherents worldwide in 2014, but the parent body is, as far as I can tell, defunct.  Some Internet sources, I think, have confused the NAC for the CAC.  I trust my reference books more than certain websites in this matter.  Also, several extant groups with “Catholic Apostolic Church” in their name have no historical relationship to the Irvingites.

Leeson, a longtime member of the CAC congregation at Gordon Square, London, wrote hymns and published volumes of them.  The main audience for these texts consisted of children.  Our saint, who contributed nine hymns and translations to the CAC hymnal, wrote her hymns in a state of prophetic utterance, consistent with the theology of her chosen denomination.”

 

_____________________________

Anthems

REGINA, caeli, laetare, alleluia:
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,
Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.		 O QUEEN of heaven rejoice! alleluia:
For He whom thou didst merit to bear, alleluia,
Hath arisen as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.
V. Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia,
R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.		 V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
R. Because the Lord is truly risen, alleluia.
Oremus
Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum laetificare dignatus es: praesta, quaesumus; ut, per eius Genetricem Virginem Mariam, perpetuae capiamus gaudia vitae. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.		 Let us pray
O God, who gave joy to the world through the resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; grant, we beseech Thee, that through His Mother, the Virgin Mary, we may obtain the joys of everlasting life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Regina coeli is an antiphon for four voices in honour of the Blessed Mary Virgin for the Eastertide, attributed to Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The hymn goes back to the 12th century; the author is unknown.  It was in Franciscan use, after Compline, in the first half of the following century.

Perhaps the most interesting legend surrounding the prayer has it being composed, in part, by St. Gregory the Great. The legend has it that in the year 596, during Easter time, a pestilence was ravaging Rome. St. Gregory the Great requested a procession be held to pray that the pestilence be stopped. On the appointed day of the procession he assembled with his clergy at dawn at the church of Ara Coeli. Holding in his hand the icon of our Lady that was said to have been painted by St. Luke, he and his clergy started out in procession to St. Peter’s. As he passed the Castle of Hadrian, as it was called in those days, voices were heard from above singing the Regina Caeli. The astonished Pope, enraptured with the angelic singing, replied in a loud voice: “Ora pro nobis Deum. Alleluia!” At that moment an angel appeared in a glorious light, sheathed the sword of pestilence in its scabbard, and from that day the pestilence ceased. In honor of this miraculous event, the name of the castle was then changed to Sant’ Angelo and the words of the angelic hymn were inscribed upon the roof of the Church of Ara Coeli.

Here are the King’s Singers.

The Regina coeli is also sung in Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana.

After mass during Eastertide we will be singing the Gregorian version

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Mount Calvary Music, Palm Sunday 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Palm Sunday

April 9, 2017

Hymns

All glory, laud, and honor

O sacred head, sore wounded

Ride on, ride on in majesty

Anthems

Pueri hebraeprum, Tomás Luis de Victoria

Ode I, Triodion, Arvo Pärt

Common

Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Missa Brevis, Palestrina

____________________________

All glory, laud and honor was written by St. Theodulph of Orleans in 820 while he was imprisoned in Angers, France, for conspiring against the King, with whom he had fallen out of favor. It was translated by John Mason Neale. The text is a retelling of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The medieval church re-enacted this story on Palm Sunday. The priests and inhabitants of a city would process from the fields to the gate of the city, following a living representation of Jesus seated on a donkey. When they reached the city gates, a choir of children would sing this hymn, then in Latin: Gloria, laus et honor, and the refrain was taken up by the crowd. At this point the gates were opened and the crowd made its way through the streets to the cathedral. Today we praise the “Redeemer, King” because we know just what kind of King He was and is – an everlasting King who reigns not just in Jerusalem, but over the entire earth. What else can we do but praise Him with glory, laud, and honor.

All glory, laud, and honour
to thee, Redeemer, King,
to whom the lips of children
made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
thou David’s royal Son,
who in the Lord’s name comest,
the King and blessed one: [Refrain]

The company of angels
are praising thee on high,
and mortal men and all things
created make reply: [Refrain]

The people of the Hebrews
with palms before thee went:
our praise and prayer and anthems
before thee we present: [Refrain]

To thee before thy passion
they sang their hymns of praise:
to thee now high exalted
our melody we raise: [Refrain]

Thou didst accept their praises,
accept the prayers we bring,
who in all good delightest,
thou good and gracious King: [Refrain]

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

 

John Mason Neale in cassock

John Mason Neale, D.D., the translator of  Honor, laus, et gloria (1818—1866)  was the son of the Rev. Cornelius Neale, and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, ” The father died in 1823, and the boy’s early training was entirely under the direction of his mother, a devout Evangelical.  At Cambridge he identified himself with the Church movement, which was spreading there in a quieter, but no less real, way than at Oxford. He became one of the founders of the Ecclesiological, or, as it was commonly called, the Cambridge Camden Society, in conjunction with Mr. E. J. Boyce, his future brother-in-law, and Mr. Benjamin Webb, afterwards the well-known Vicar of St. Andrew’s, Wells Street, and editor of The Church Quarterly Review.. In the quiet retreat of East Grinstead, therefore, Dr. Neale spent the remainder of his comparatively short life writing in support of the Oxford movement and caring for the Anglican congregation he had founded, the Sisterhood of St. Margaret’s. Dr. Neale met with many difficulties, and great opposition from the outside, which, on one occasion, if not more, culminated in actual violence. In 1857 he was attending the funeral of one of the Sisters at Lewes, when a report was spread that the deceased had been decoyed into St. Margaret’s Home, persuaded to leave all her money to the sisterhood, and then purposely sent to a post in which she might catch the scarlet fever of which she died.  Dr. Neale and some Sisters who were attending the funeral were attacked and roughly handled by a mob.

His window in St. Swithuns, East Grinstead

This is the original:

GLORIA, laus et honor
tibi sit, Rex Christe, Redemptor:
Cui puerile decus prompsit
Hosanna pium. R.

Israel es tu Rex, Davidis et
inclyta proles:
Nomine qui in Domini,
Rex benedicte, venis.

Coetus in excelsis te laudat
caelicus omnis,
Et mortalis homo, et cuncta
creata simul.

Plebs Hebraea tibi cum palmis
obvia venit:
Cum prece, voto, hymnis,
adsumus ecce tibi.

Hi tibi passuro solvebant
munia laudis:
Nos tibi regnanti pangimus
ecce melos

Hi placuere tibi, placeat
devotio nostra:
Rex bone, Rex clemens, cui
bona cuncta placent.

Her is the Gregorian setting of the Latin..

Theodulf was born in Spain, probably Saragossa, between 750 and 760, and was of Visigothic descent. He fled Spain because of the Moorish occupation of the region and traveled to the South-Western province of Gaul called Aquitaine, where he received an education. He went on to join the monastery near Maguelonne in Southern Gaul led by the abbot Benedict of Aniane. During his trip to Rome in 786, Theodulf was inspired by the centres of learning there, and sent letters to a large number of abbots and bishops of the Frankish empire, encouraging them to establish public schools.

Charlemagne recognized Theodulf’s importance within his court and simultaneously named him Bishop of Orléans (c. 798) and abbot of many monasteries, most notably the Benedictine abbey of Fleury-sur-Loire.[5] He then went on to establish public schools outside the monastic areas which he oversaw, following through on this idea that had impressed him so much during his trip to Rome. Theodulf quickly became one of Charlemagne’s favoured theologians alongside Alcuin of Northumbria and was deeply involved in many facets of Charlemagne’s desire to reform the church, for example by editing numerous translated texts that Charlemagne believed to be inaccurate and translating sacred texts directly from the classical Greek and Hebrew languages. He was a witness to the emperor’s will in 811.

Charlemagne died in 814 and was succeeded by his son Louis the Pious. Louis’ nephew, King Bernard of Italy, sought independence from the Frankish empire and raised his army against the latter. Bernard was talked into surrendering, but was punished by Louis severely, sentencing him to have his sight removed. The procedure of blinding Bernard went wrong and he died as a result of the operation. Louis believed that numerous people in his court were conspiring against him with Bernard, and Theodulf was one of many who were accused of treason. He was forced to abandon his position of Bishop of Orléans in 817 and was exiled to a monastery in Angers in 818 where he spent the next two years of his life. After he was released in 820, he tried to reclaim his bishopric in Orléans but was never able to reach the city because it is believed that he died during the trip in 821 and his body was brought back to Angers where it was buried, (Wikipedia, alt.)

Now often named ST. THEODULPH because of its association with this text, the tune is also known, especially in organ literature, as VALET WILL ICH DIR GEBEN. It was composed by Melchior Teschner (b. Fraustadt [now Wschowa, Poland], Silesia, 1584; d. Oberpritschen, near Fraustadt, 1635) for “Valet will ich dir geben,” Valerius Herberger’s hymn for the dying. Teschner composed the tune in two five-voice settings, published in the leaflet Ein andächtiges Gebet in 1615.

Teschner studied philosophy, theology, and music at the University of Frankfurt an-der-Oder and later studied at the universities of Helmstedt and Wittenberg, Germany. From 1609 until 1614 he served as cantor in the Lutheran church in Fraustadt, and from 1614 until his death he was pastor of the church in Oberpritschen.

The first stanza of the German text is

Valet will ich dir geben
Du arge, falsche Welt;
Dein sündlich böses Leben
Durchaus mir nicht gefällt.
Im Himmel ist gut wohnen,
Hinauf zieht mein Begier;
Da wird Gott herrlich lohnen
Dem, der ihm dient allhier.

Bach used the text and melody in Christus der ist mein Leben (BWV 95) and in the St. John’s Passion (BWV 245).

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Dürer, c. 1509

O sacred head sore wounded was composed by Paul Gerhardt (1607—1676), who closely modeled it after a stanza of a poem, Salve mundi salutare, possibly by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) or Arnulf of Leuwen, which contains seven stanzas meditating on how the different parts of Jesus’ body suffered during the Passion. The head is the seat of honor, “face,” and was insulted by a mocking crown of thorns, by spit, and blows from fists. Yet it is the vision of that face that will be our happiness and joy forever, for He has born all our guilt and shame, and given us His life.

O sacred head, sore wounded,
Defiled and put to scorn;
O kingly head, surrounded
With mocking crown of thorn:
What sorrow mars Thy grandeur?
Can death Thy bloom deflow’r?
O countenance whose splendor
The hosts of heav’en adore!

2 Thy beauty, long desired,
Hath vanished from our sight;
Thy pow’r is all expired,
And quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom Thou diest,
Hide not so far Thy grace:
Show me, O Love most highest,
The brightness of Thy face.

3 In Thy most bitter passion
My heart to share doth cry,
With Thee for my salvation
Upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my heart thus moved
To stand Thy cross beneath,
To mourn Thee, well-beloved,
Yet thank Thee for Thy death.

4 What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
Oh, make me Thine for ever!
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee.

5 My days are few, O fail not,
With Thine immortal pow’r,
To hold me that I quail not
In death’s most fearful hour;
That I may fight befriended,
And see in my last strife
To me Thine arms extended
Upon the cross of life.

The Latin text on which the hymn is based is:

Salve mundi salutare, Ad faciem:

Salve, caput cruentatum,

totum spinis coronatum,

conquassatum, vulneratum,

arundine verberatum,

facie sputis illita.

salve, cujus dulcis vultus,

immutatus et incultus,

immutavit suum florem,

totus versus in pallorem

quem […] coeli curia.

 

Omnis vigor atque viror

hinc recessit, non admiror,

mors apparet in aspectu

totus pendens in defectu,

attritus aegra macie.

sic affectus, sic despectus,

propter me sic interfectus,

peccatori tam indigno

cum amoris intersigno

appare clara facie.

 

In hac tua passione,

me agnosce, pastor bone,

cujus sumpsi mel ex ore,

haustum lactis cum dulcore,

prae omnibus deliciis.

non me reum asperneris,

nec indignum dedigneris,

morte tibi jam vicina,

tuum caput hic inclina,

in meis pausa brachiis.

 

Tuae sanctae passioni

me gauderem interponi,

in hac cruce tecum mori:

praesta crucis amatori,

sub cruce tua moriar.

morti tuae tam amarae

grates ago, Jesu chare;

qui es clemens, pie Deus,

fac quod petit tuus reus,

ut absque te non finiar.

 

Dum me mori est necesse,

noli mihi tunc deesse;

in tremenda mortis hora

veni, Jesu, absque mora,

tuere me et libera.

cum me jubes emigrare,

Jesu chare, tunc appare:

o amator amplectende,

temetipsum tunc ostende

in cruce salutifera.

Here is a translation of the Latin:

I Hail, bleeding Head of Jesus, hail to Thee! Thou thorn-crowned Head, I humbly worship Thee! O wounded Head, I lift my hands to Thee; O lovely Face besmeared, I gaze on Thee; O bruised and livid Face, look down on me!

II Hail, beauteous Face of Jesus, bent on me, Whom angel choirs adore exultantly! Hail, sweetest Face of Jesus, bruised for me– Hail, Holy One, whose glorious Face for me Is shorn of beauty on that fatal Tree!

III All strength, all freshness, is gone forth from Thee: What wonder! Hath not God afflicted Thee, And is not death himself approaching Thee? O Love! But death hath laid his touch on Thee, And faint and broken features turn to me.

IV O have they thus maltreated Thee, my own? O have they Thy sweet Face despised, my own? And all for my unworthy sake, my own! O in Thy beauty turn to me, my own; O turn one look of love on me, my own!

V In this Thy Passion, Lord, remember me; In this Thy pain, O Love, acknowledge me; The honey of whose lips was shed on me, The milk of whose delights hath strengthened me Whose sweetness is beyond delight for me!

VI Despise me not, O Love; I long for Thee; Contemn me not, unworthy though I be; But now that death is fast approaching Thee, Incline Thy Head, my Love, my Love, to me, To these poor arms, and let it rest on me!

VII The holy Passion I would share with Thee, And in Thy dying love rejoice with Thee; Content if by this Cross I die with Thee; Content, Thou knowest, Lord, how willingly Where I have lived to die for love of Thee.

VIII For this Thy bitter death all thanks to Thee, Dear Jesus, and Thy wondrous love for me! O gracious God, so merciful to me, Do as Thy guilty one entreateth Thee, And at the end let me be found with Thee!

IX When from this life, O Love, Thou callest me, Then, Jesus, be not wanting unto me, But in the dreadful hour of agony, O hasten, Lord, and be Thou nigh to me, Defend, protect, and O deliver me.

X When Thou, O God, shalt bid my soul be free, Then, dearest Jesus, show Thyself to me! O condescend to show Thyself to me,– Upon Thy saving Cross, dear Lord, to me,– And let me die, my Lord, embracing Thee!

Membra Jesu Nostri, The Limbs of Our Jesus,  (BuxVW 75), is a cycle of seven cantatas composed by Dieterich Buxtehude in 1680. This work is the first Lutheran oratorio. The main text is from Salve mundi salutare – also known as the Rhythmica oratio . It is divided into seven parts, each addressed to a different part of Christ’s crucified body: feet, knees, hands, sides, breast, heart, and head (ad faciem)

Arnulf of Leuven (c. 1200–1250) was the abbot of the Cistercian in Villers-la-Ville. After serving in this office for ten years, he abdicated, hoping to pursue a life devoted to study and asceticism. He is now consider the probable author of Salve mundi salutare.

PASSION CHORALE:  The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret” (My heart is distracted by a gentle maid), which first appeared in print in the 1601 Lustgarten neuer teutscher Gesäng, Balletti, Galliarden und Intraden. The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. It first appeared with the Gerhardt text in Praxis Pietatis Melica (1656). Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in the St Matthew Passion. He also used the hymn’s text and melody in the second movement of the cantata Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem (BWV 159). Bach used the melody on different words in his Christmas Oratorio, in the first part (no. 5). Franz Liszt included an arrangement of this hymn in the sixth station, Saint Veronica, of his Via Crucis. The Danish composer Rued Langgaard composed a set of variations for string quartet on this tune. It is also employed in the final chorus of “Sinfonia Sacra”, the 9th symphony of the English composer Edmund Rubbra. Peter Paul and Mary used the tune in their Because all men are brothers and Paul Simon used it in “American Tune.”

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Ride on, ride on in majesty! was written by the Anglican clergyman and Oxford Professor of Poetry Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868). The text unites meekness and majesty, sacrifice and conquest, suffering and glory – all central to the gospel for Palm Sunday. Each stanza begins with “Ride on, Ride on in majesty.” Majesty is the text’s theme as the writer helps us to experience the combination of victory and tragedy that characterizes the Triumphal Entry. Jesus is hailed with “Hosanna” as he rides forth to be crucified. That death spells victory: it is His triumph “o’er captive death and conquered sin.” The angelic powers look down in awe at the coming sacrifice and God the Father awaits His Son’s victory with expectation. Finally, Jesus rides forth to take his “power … and reign!” On the Cross He has defeated death and when He comes in glory to reign He will destroy it forever.

 1 Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Hark, all the tribes hosanna cry:
O Saviour meek, pursue thy road
with palms and scattered garments strowed.
2 Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die:
O Christ, thy triumphs now begin
o’er captive death and conquered sin.
3 Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The wingèd squadrons of the sky
look down with sad and wondering eyes
to see the approaching sacrifice.
4 Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The last and fiercest strife is nigh:
the Father on his sapphire throne
awaits his own anointed Son.
5 Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O God, thy power, and reign.

As an Englishman Milman thought the donkey should not be ignored, and the first stanza originally was:

Ride on, ride on in majesty! Hark, all the tribes hosanna cry;  Thine humble beast pursues his road. With palms and scattered garments strowed.

Henry Hart Milman

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) was born in London, the third son of Sir Francis Milman, 1st Baronet, physician to King George III.  He was educated at Eton and at Brasenose College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate prize with a poem on the Apollo Belvidere in 1812, was elected a fellow of Brasenose in 1814, and in 1816 won the English essay prize with his Comparative Estimate of Sculpture and Painting. In 1816 he was ordained, and two years later became parish priest of St Mary’s, Reading.

In 1821 Milman was elected professor of poetry at Oxford; and in 1827 he delivered the Bampton lectures on “The character and conduct of the Apostles considered as an evidence of Christianity.” In 1835, Sir Robert Peel made him Rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster, and Canon of Westminster, and in 1849 he became Dean of St Paul’s. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1864.

Milman made his appearance as a dramatist with his tragedy Fazio (produced on the stage under the title of The Italian Wife). He also wrote Samor, The Lord of The Bright City, the subject of which was taken from British legend, the “bright city” being Gloucester. In subsequent poetical works he was more successful, notably The Fall of Jerusalem (1820) and The Martyr of Antioch (1822, based on the life of Saint Margaret the Virgin), which was used as the basis for an oratorio by Arthur Sullivan. The influence of Byron is seen in his Belshazzar (1822). Another tragedy, Anne Boleyn, followed in 1826. Milman also wrote “When our heads are bowed with woe,” and “Ride on, ride on, in majesty”; a version of the Sanskrit episode of Nala and Damayanti; and translations of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus and the Bacchae of Euripides. His poetical works were published in three volumes in 1839.

Turning to another field, Milman published in 1829 his History of the Jews, which is memorable as the first by an English clergyman which treated the Jews as an Oriental tribe, recognized sheikhs and amirs in the Old Testament, sifted and classified documentary evidence, and evaded or minimized the miraculous. In consequence, the author was attacked and his preferment was delayed. His History of Christianity to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire (1840) had been completely ignored; but the continuation of his major work, the History of Latin Christianity (1855), which has passed through many editions, was well received. In 1838 he had edited Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and in the following year published his Life of Gibbon.

When he died he had almost finished a history of St Paul’s Cathedral, which was completed and published by his son, A. Milman (London, 1868), who also collected and published in 1879 a volume of his essays and articles. Milman was buried in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where his grave was marked by an elaborate tomb. When the Chapel of the Order of the British Empire was created, the original tomb was replaced by a slab in the floor. Sic transit. (Wikipedia, alt.)

The tune WINCHESTER NEW originally appeared as the melody to “Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten,” in the Musicalisch Handbuch der Geistlichen Melodien, Hamburg, 1690. Because it was also used for a hymn, “Dir, dir, Jehovah, will ich singen,” whose words were written by Bartholomäus Crasselius (1667–1724), the tune is sometimes erroneously ascribed to him.

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

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It will be noted that all three hymns today are contrafacta, as they are the product of the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music. In particular, the tune of O sacred head was originally a love song.

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The Offertory Anthem for Palm Sunday will be Tomás Luis de Victoria’s (1548-1611) Pueri Hebraeorum. Victoria used motifs from Gregorian chants to construct motet, which respects and brings out the emotional implications of the Latin text. The counterpoint indicates to us how the Jewish children grouped themselves around Him whom they wished to acclaim. The rhythmic syncopations describe how the children threw their garments on the road, “in via.” The acclamations, “Benedictus”, are introduced in intervals of ascending fourths imitating canonically the first section of the motet.

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The Communion Anthem for Palm Sunday will be the first Ode from Arvo Pärt’s Triodion:  O Jesus the Son of God, Have Mercy Upon Us.  The Ode is rhythmically static, while harmonic movement similarly ceases in the final supplications, where Pärt’s music can be heard at its starkest and most unadorned.

O Jesus the Son of God, Have Mercy Upon Us. We do homage to Thy pure image, O Good One, entreating forgiveness of our transgressions, O Christ our God: for of Thine own good will Thou wast graciously pleased to ascend the Cross in the flesh, that Thou mightest deliver from bondage to the enemy those whom Thou hadst fashioned. For which cause we cry aloud unto Thee with thanksgiving; with joy has Thou filled all things, O our Saviour, in that Thou didst come to save the world.

Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt (1935-    ) is an Estonian composer. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique,  Tintinnabuli, which was  influenced by the composer’s experiences with  chant.  It  is characterized by two types of voice, the first of which (dubbed the “tintinnabular voice”) arpeggiates the tonic triad , and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion. The works often have a slow and meditative tempo, and a minimalist approach to both notation and performance.

Pärt’s music has similarities and differences from the great polyphonists like Victoria:  a diatonic idiom with a slow harmonic turnover, no modulation, much use of the triad, an uncluttered background to the writing which emphasizes its stillness, and a deep respect for silence. The differences in style between Pärt and the Renaissance masters  are Pärt’s lack of interest in counterpoint, and the chord clusters which derive from tintinnabuli. Pärt’s melodies tend to come one at a time, unwinding slowly: his is not a teaming web of melodies, as was commonplace with the best polyphonists. Nor did Palestrina and the others have access to the kind of dissonance which at times so delights Pärt.

Here is the Tallis’s Scholars video on Pärt’s musical style.

(Gratias ago Wikipediā et aliis aliorum plurimorum scriptorum interretialum.)

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Mount Calvary Music April 2, 2017

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Lazarus English manuscript

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Lazarus Sunday

April 2, 2017

Hymns

I heard the voice of Jesus say

What wondrous love

Thou art the Way

Anthems

When Jesus wept, the falling tear, William Billings

I am the Resurrection, Thomas Morley

Common

Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Merbecke

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I heard the voice of Jesus say was written by the Scots clergyman Horatius Bonar (1808–1889). The Lord’s invitations to us, and the promises attached to them, are conditioned only upon are coming to Him. They require no special preparations or qualifications, nor do they depend on our own “righteousness.” The only sacrifice He requires is “a broken and a contrite heart.” (Psalm 51:17) We need but “come” and “drink,” and Christ’s infinite blessings are poured out upon us. We are made clean and a new creation not by ourselves, but through His atoning sacrifice on the Cross. May every one that is weary and thirsting for a better, eternal life hear and accept the Lord’s gracious invitations to come, rest, drink, and live through and in Him.

Here are Tim Callies comments:

Horatius Bonar color

Horatius Bonar

“Horatius Bonar was born in 1808 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a ruling elder in the Church of Scotland. After a relatively uneventful upbringing, Bonar entered into the ministry himself, becoming pastor of the North Parish in the rural town of Kelso.

Not long after he entered the ministry there was a disruption in the Church of Scotland that resulted in the withdrawal of 451 ministers from the Established church, among whom were Bonar and a number of his friends. Together they formed The Free Church of Scotland.

Bonar spent the next 20 years pastoring the congregation in Kelso, writing, and engaging in evangelism. Throughout his life he had been strongly influenced by Thomas Chalmers, and in 1866 he planted a new church in his home city of Edinburgh: the Chalmers Memorial Chapel. He was to serve that church until the year before his death in 1889.

In Bonar’s day the Scottish church had no substantial library of hymns since they sang metrical Psalms almost exclusively. Bonar had begun to write hymns before his ordination when he was serving as superintendent of a Sunday school. He found that the youth had little love for either the words or the tunes they were singing, so he set out to write a few hymns with simpler lyrics and already familiar tunes. These hymns were received wonderfully.

It wasn’t long after this that Bonar, apparently having a gift and an interest in writing verse, took to writing adult hymns. This continued as a habit while he served as pastor, and in the course of his ministry he published a number of hymn compilations.

“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” was one of the hymns he wrote during his tenure at Kelso. This is perhaps his most famous song, having found good reception not only in Scotland but also in the wider English-speaking world.

What makes the hymn so widely appealing may well be its focus on the gospel call of Christ to come to him, look to him, drink, and rest, and the simple call to obey and to find in him all that he has promised. It is simple, sweet and encouraging.

Down through the centuries many have observed how people of true faith tend to exhibit an uncommon degree of confidence, courage, resilience, and inner peace. It’s not that they don’t occasionally suffer doubt, fear, sorrow, or discouragement, but they’re able to fight through these challenges and emerge in a better place.  Why?  Perhaps it’s faith that we have a Savior who traded his Heavenly glory and His mortal life to save us from our own sin, who provides us a sure refuge and guidance in times of trial, and who has kept for us an eternal and blissfully happy home with Him. Believers know these things because He promised them Himself, in the Gospel!”

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Come unto me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down
thy head upon my breast’:
I came to Jesus as I was,
weary and worn and sad;
I found in him a resting-place,
and he has made me glad.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Behold, I freely give
the living water, thirsty one;
stoop down and drink and live’:
I came to Jesus, and I drank
of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
and now I live in him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘I am this dark world’s light;
look unto me, thy morn shall rise,
and all thy day be bright’:
I looked to Jesus, and I found
in him my star, my sun;
and in that light of life I’ll walk
till travelling days are done.

It has been rendered into Latin by Dr. Macgill in his Songs of the Christian Creed and Life, 1876.

Loquentem exaudivi
Jesum : “Veni, quiesce,
Sino meo defrssus
Caput tu requiesce.”
Lassus fui et veni,
Tristis, gravis labore,
Et in Eo quievi,
Deposito delore.

Loqentem et audivi:
“Tibi do Ego sponte,
Sititor, aquam vivam;
Vivas bibens de Fonte.”
Simulque veni,bibi
Et in anima renata
Vivico de rivo,
Vivo, siti sedata.

Loqentem et audivi:
“Lux sum, tibi videnti
Me, lumen afflugebit
Tota die nitenti.”
Vidi, refulsit Ille,
Nocturnus, matutinus,
Eiusque luce domum
Incedo peregrinus.

The tune KINGSFOLD is an old English folk song. The tune is written in e minor, but also can be considered a modal tune. The tune was published in English Country Songs (1893), an anthology compiled by Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland. It wasn’t until Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958) heard this folk song in Kingsfold, Sussex, England, that the tune was actually named. After Vaughn Williams had heard the tune, he decided  to arrange the tune for the text of “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” for the  English Hymnal (1906).

Here is the choir of Manchester Cathedral. Here is a fantasy on Kingsfold for handbells. Here a fantasy meditation for organ.

“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” is one of the commonly lined-out hymns,

In “lining out,” the leader tells the coming verse or line to be repeated by the congregation (as opposed to call and response, where the leader sings a line and the congregation responds with a standard line that remains constant throughout the song). Lined out hymns usually have a steady slow beat and are sung early in the service (as opposed to “shouts” which typically are fast and, if anything, gain speed, and are sung late in the service.

Here it is sung as a lined-out hymn with choir and without choir.

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What wondrous love

What wondrous love is an American folk hymn, as its repetitions evidence, from the Second Great Awakening. This hymn articulates the question that Christians ask every day: what did I do to deserve such a wonderful love from God and from Christ? The hymn is an offering of thanks to the Son for laying aside his crown as King and humbling himself even unto death. Jesus took on the sin and shame of man and thereby became the Lamb who was slain to save our sins. Jesus is not only the Lamb, but he is I AM, Lord and God. Our response is endless praise forever and ever, and forever we shall marvel and ask, “What wondrous Love?”

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
when I was sinking down, sinking down;
when I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing,
to God and to the Lamb, I will sing;
to God and to the Lamb who is the great I AM –
while millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
while millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
and when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on;
and when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be,
and through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
and through eternity I’ll sing on.

As a folk hymn the exact history of What wondrous love is not entirely clear. It is sometimes described as a “white spiritual”, from the American South.

The hymn’s lyrics were first published in Lynchburg, Virginia in the c. 1811 camp meeting songbook A General Selection of the Newest and Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs Now in Use. The lyrics may also have been printed, in a slightly different form, in the 1811 book Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Original and Selected, published in Lexington, Kentucky. (It was included in the third edition of this text published in 1818, but all copies of the first edition have been lost.) In most early printings, the hymn’s text was attributed to an anonymous author, though the 1848 hymnal The Hesperian Harp attributes the text to a Methodist pastor from Oxford, Georgia, named Alexander Means.

The tune was discovered by composer William Walker on his journey through the Appalachian region of America. Though the tune had been around for many years, it was passed on by rote, and not written down. Walker decided in 1835 that he would change that, and added the hymn to his collection Southern Harmony. The Appalachian region is well known for having many Irish and Scottish immigrants, which is shown in the hymns haunting text and minor tune. The hymn is written in a way that made it easy to pass on from generation to generation, repetition of lyrics. The hymn was written in the early 1800’s, a time when hymnals were scarce and music was rarely written down. To make it easier for people to learn hymns (Especially in the time of the Second Great Awakening), the author would often times write the same lyrics over and over again to drive home the point, while still keeping the text simple and easy to learn.

The hymn is sung in Dorian mode, giving it a haunting quality. Though The Southern Harmony and many later hymnals incorrectly notated the song in Aeolian mode (natural minor), even congregations singing from these hymnals generally sang in Dorian mode by spontaneously raising the sixth note a half step wherever it appeared. Twentieth-century hymnals generally present the hymn in Dorian mode, or sometimes in Aeolian mode but with a raised sixth. The hymn has an unusual meter of 6-6-6-3-6-6-6-6-6-3. The meter of “What Wondrous Love” derives from an old English ballad about the infamous pirate Captain Kidd:

My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed, when I sailed;
My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed;
My name was Robert Kidd, God’s laws I did forbid,
So wickedly I did when I sailed, when I sailed
So wickedly I did when I sailed.

(His real name was William; Americans erroneously called him Robert.)

A popular style of singing during this time was Shape Note Singing, which is a form of singing that uses shapes to denote which pitch should be sung, instead of the traditional European notation that we find in most music now-a-days. In order for the shape note singing to be done correctly, the congregation would be divided into four different sections, and each section was given a different part to sing. This was easier for people to sing, because most people during that time had no idea how to read music, and Shape Note Singing was a way to take something like music and give it to everyone, even the unlearned. The repetitious lyrics also made the text easy to remember.

 

William Walker

William Walker (1809-1875)

William Walker was born in Martin Mills, South Carolina in 1807 and grew up just outside of Spartanburg, where, in order to distinguish the difference between himself and other William Walkers, he was nicknamed “Singing Billy.” in 1835 he published a collection of four-shape Shape Note tune books entitled Southern Harmony. This was used for many years and was revised several different times, the final of which was printed in 1854 and is still used today in Kentucky at several different camp meetings. In 1846 Walker published another tune book that was supposed to be used as an index to Southern Harmony. The Publication was entitled The Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist, which contained several different camp meeting tunes. in 1867 Walker published another tune book entitled Christian Harmony where he adopted a new shape notation that contained seven different shapes instead of the traditional four shapes. Christian Harmony shared many similarities with Southern Harmony, but the biggest difference of note was the addition of the Alto harmony in tunes that previously did not contain that particular harmony. William Walker lived a long life, and finally passed away in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1875. He has an infamy that continues still today with the singing of traditional Shape Note tunes at conventions around the country and especially groups such as the Sacred Harp Singers Of Georgia and Alabama.

Southern Harmony

In 1952, American composer and musicologist Charles F. Bryan included What Wondrous Love Is This in his folk opera Singin’ Billy, loosely based on Walker’s life as a singing school teacher. In 1958, American composer Samuel Barber composed Wondrous Love: Variations on a Shape Note Hymn (Op. 34), a work for organ, for Christ Episcopal Church in Grosse Pointe, Michigan; the church’s organist, an associate of Barber’s, had requested a piece for the dedication ceremony of the church’s new organ. The piece begins with a statement that closely follows the traditional hymn; four variations follow, of which the last is the “longest and most expressive.” Here is a performance. In 1966, the United Methodist Book of Hymns became the first standard hymnal to incorporate What Wondrous Love.

Here is the St. Olaf choir singing What Wondrous Love. Here is a shape note choir singing the hymn at Berea College. The Germans have taken up shape note singing. Here is a chamber setting for piano and viola and variations for solo viola.

____________________

Thou art the way is by the Episcopal Bishop George W. Doane (1799-1859). “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). In His sayings which begin “ἐγώ εἰμί, ego eimi, I AM,” Jesus implicitly makes a claim to divinity, because the name of God is יְהֹוָה, YHWH, “I AM WHO AM.” Jesus is the only Way to the Father, because Jesus alone is God and man and unites the two; Jesus is the only Truth, because He reveals the Father and He reveals the ultimate meaning of creation, which is Himself, in whom and for whom the universe was created; Jesus is the only true Life, which death itself could not destroy, and which through His resurrection and the power of the Spirit He pours forth onto a dying world to rescue it from eternal death.

George Doane

George Washington Doane

George Washington Doane, D.D. was born at Trenton, New Jersey, May 27, 1799, and graduated at Union College, Schenectady, New York. Ordained in 1821, he was Assistant Minister at Trinity Church, New York, till 1824. In 1824 he became a Professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.; in 1828 Rector of Trinity Church, Boston; and, in 1832, Bishop of New Jersey. He founded St. Mary’s Hall, Burlington, 1837, and Burlington College, Burlington, 1846. Died April 27, 1859.  Bishop Doane’s exceptional talents, learning, and force of character, made him one of the great prelates of his time. His warmth of heart secured devoted friends, who still cherish his memory with revering affection. He passed through many and severe troubles, which left their mark upon his later verse. He was no mean poet, and a few of his lyrics are among our best. His Works, in 4 volumes with Memoir by his son, were published in 1860. He issued in 1824 Songs by the Way, a small volume of great merit and interest. This edition is now rare. A second edition, much enlarged, appeared after his death, in 1859, and a third, in small 4to, in 1875. These include much matter of a private nature, such as he would not himself have given to the world, and by no means equal to his graver and more careful lyrics, on which alone his poetic fame must rest. The edition of 1824 contains several important hymns, some of which have often circulated without his name. Two of these are universally known as his, having been adopted by the American Prayer Book Collection, 1826:–

Thou art the Way: by thee alone
from sin and death we flee;
and they who would the Father seek
must seek him, Lord, by thee.
Thou art the Truth: thy word alone
true wisdom can impart;
thou only canst inform the mind
and purify the heart.
Thou art the Life: the rending tomb
proclaims thy conquering arm;
and those who put their trust in thee
nor death nor hell shall harm.
Thou art the Way, the Truth, the Life:
grant us that Way to know,
that Truth to keep, that Life to win,
whose joys eternal flow.

Here is the hymnal version.

 

 

Thomas RavenscroftThomas Ravenscroft

The tune DUNDEE is by Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1582 or 1592 – 1635), an English musician, theorist and editor, notable as a composer of rounds and catches, and especially for compiling collections of British folk music.

Little is known of Ravenscroft’s early life. He probably sang in the choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1594, when a Thomas Raniscroft was listed on the choir rolls and remained there until 1600 under the directorship of Thomas Giles. He probably received his bachelor’s degree in 1605 from Cambridge.

Ravenscroft’s principal contributions are his collections of folk music, including catches, rounds, street cries, vendor songs, “freeman’s songs” and other anonymous music, in three collections: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromelia or The Seconde Part of Musicks Melodie (1609) and Melismata (1611). Some of the music he compiled has acquired extraordinary fame, though his name is rarely associated with the music; for example “Three Blind Mice” first appears in Deuteromelia. He also published a metrical psalter (The Whole Booke of Psalmes) in 1621. As a composer, his works are mostly forgotten but include 11 anthems, 3 motets for five voices and 4 fantasias for viols.

As a writer, he wrote two treatises on music theory: A Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact’ring the Degrees (London, 1614), and A Treatise of Musick, which remains in manuscript (unpublished). (Hymnary)

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Jesus wept Tissot

Jesus Wept, by James Tissot (1836-1902)

When Jesus wept, the falling tear is a round by William Billings (1746-1800)’ Billings wrote it when he was twenty two, “Jesus wept” – the shortest verse and the most heart-rending in Scripture. Jesus weeps with Mary and Marth and will all who morn, He weeps at the universal death which our guilt has brought upon the world, He weeps at the hardness of heart of His enemies who will seek to kill Him because He raises the dead.

When Jesus wept, the falling tear
in mercy flowed beyond all bound.
When Jesus groaned, a trembling fear
seized all the guilty world around.

William Billings

William Billings (1746-1800)

William Billings is probably the best known early American composer. Billings was born in Boston on October 7, 1746. Largely self-trained in music, he was a tanner by trade and a friend of such figures of the American Revolution as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Billings’s New England Psalm-Singer (1770), engraved by Revere, was the first collection of music entirely by an American.

New England Psalm singer

Billings wrote for one and only one combination of musical forces: the four-part chorus, singing a cappella. His many hymns and anthems were published in large collections. His music can be at times forceful and stirring, as in his patriotic song Chester; ecstatic, as in his hymn Africa; or elaborate and celebratory, as in his “Easter Anthem”. The latter sounds rather like a miniature Handelian chorus, sung a cappella. As might be expected from a composer who was very close to his roots in folk music, Billings’s music shows a striking purity.

Billings often wrote the lyrics for his own compositions. Like the notes, the words are occasionally awkward but always forceful and vivid. He wrote long prefaces to his works in which he explained (often in an endearingly eccentric prose style) the rudiments of music and how his work should be performed. His writings reflect his extensive experience as a singing master, and often include advice that would wisely be heeded by choral singers today.

Billings’s work was very popular in its heyday, but it failed to last out the composer’s lifetime, and he died in poverty. The Stoughton Musical Society, formed by former students of Billings, has carried on his tradition for over 200 years. As printed in shape notes, Billings’s work has also survived in the musical tradition of the Sacred Harp, where his songs continue to be highly favored by many singers. The modern American composer William Schuman featured Billings’s American Revolutionary War anthem Chester and When Jesus wept in his composition New England Triptych.

New England Triptych was  commissioned by Andre Kostelanetz  and premiered in 1956. The second movement, “When Jesus Wept,” begins with a solo by bassoon and soon the bassoon is accompanied by oboe. “When Jesus Wept” is a round and uses Billings’ music in its original form. Here it is performed by the Eastman-Rochester orchestra and here by the U. S.Marine Band.

 

A Long  Digression on Shape-Note Singing
With acknowledgment to Keith Willard, Jason Steidl, and others.

The singing of syllables (solmization) to teach students scales & intervals is usually credited to Guido d’ Arezzo (11th century, a six syllable system ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la). In England, by Elizabethan times, this system became simplified to four syllables fa, sol, la, and mi.

A singer would be taught to associate the singing of a given syllable with a particular scale degree. For example the major scale would be sung (while singing the syllables) fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa. This technique was transplanted from Great Britain to colonial America long before any change occurred in the conventional roundhead music notation.

In Puritan colonial America, where, after generations of rejecting choirs and polyphony as a part of “papist” culture, congregational music had gone through a dramatic period of decline.1 Church singing then consisted of lining out music, wherein a leader would sing one line of a psalm or other scripture and the congregation would follow in unison. Reformed leaders intended for this method of congregational singing to give every believer an equal voice and allow all to participate in the simple music. Over time, however, singing had devolved into discord. According to contemporary accounts, by the early 1700s, many congregations knew only a handful of tunes, which they sang very slowly in free rhythm, with very little emphasis on musical agreement. Tunes varied widely from church to church and congregants rarely repeated the same notes of the lined-out hymns together. Unhappy with their musical situation, a group of pastors employed itinerant singing masters to instruct their congregations in days or weeks-long singing schools so that singing might be more agreeable in church services.

In 1801, William Little and William Smith, two singing masters, applied John Connelly’s recently-invented shape-note singing system to their pedagogical book, the Easy Instructor.. Along with naming degrees of the moveable scale “fa,” “so,” “la,” and “mi,” a long-standing part of English musical tradition, they printed their music with the shapes of a triangle, circle, square, and diamond that corresponded to the notes.
The four-shape system is able to cover the full musical scale because each syllable-shape combination other than mi is assigned to two distinct notes of the scale. For example, the C major scale would be notated and sung as follows:

Shape notes 7

This notation reform which combined music notation with solmization practice ignited the oblong shaped note tunebook golden era (1801 – Civil War). Books such as Repository of Sacred Music, Kentucky Harmony, Southern Harmony, Sacred Harp, Hesperian Harp, and Social Harp were just some of the dozens produced during this era.

Then came the ominous cloud of the “Better Music Movement.” With this movement came the do re mi fa sol la ti do solmization system which had long replaced the simpler fasola system in Europe among the musically literate. In the urban north the victory of Mason and his ilk was complete with the eradication from the churches and communities of such scourges as the “patent” notes and the “crude music” of composers such as William Billings.
Sacred Harp singing originated in the South. The name come from The Sacred Harp (1844), a shape-note tunebook. The South was far more resilient in preserving the old ways. But even the new movement was felt below the Mason-Dixon Line, and thus the seven-shaped note system was born. Southern shaped-note tune compilers largely accepted the belief that the seven syllable (“one for each note”) solmization was superior to the old fashioned fasola approach. Chief among those leading the charge to this trough was “singing Billy Walker” (compiler of the four-shape Southern Harmony) with his seven-note Christian Harmony. Although a variety of seven shape notations were invented, the emerging standard was created by Jesse Aiken.

Shape notes reaal 7

During the era of late 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century legions of seven- shape small books were published in southern book mills. The music published in these books were mostly gospel and revival tunes. With the coming of modernity to the rural South this vigorous flood of music publishing dwindled, but continues to this day

Shape notes amazing grace

Here is a talk on the seven shape system. Here is a talk by Alan Lomax on the emotions that the singing provokes. Here is Old Hundred in the cathedral in Charleston. Here Old Hundred by a congregation in Missouri,showing the seating. Here is some vigorous singing at Goshen, Indiana. And here in Iowa. And in Maine.

The Experience of Singing Shape-Note Hymns

Taking part in a shape-note singing is an experience like no other. Grouped according to vocal range in a square formation, facing the song leader in the center and singing a capella, singers create a powerful sonic exchange.

In Sacred Harp singing, pitch is not absolute. The shapes and notes designate degrees of the scale, not particular pitches. Thus for a song in the key of C, fa designates C and F; for a song in G, fa designates G and C, and so on; hence it is called a moveable “do” system.

When Sacred Harp singers begin a song, they normally start by singing it with the appropriate syllable for each pitch, using the shapes to guide them. For those in the group not yet familiar with the song, the shapes help with the task of sight reading. The process of reading through the song with the shapes also helps fix the notes in memory. Once the shapes have been sung, the group then sings the verses of the song with their printed words.
Sacred Harp songs are quite different from “mainstream” Protestant hymns in their musical style: some tunes, known as fuguing tunes, contain sections that are polyphonic in texture, and the harmony tends to deemphasize the interval of the third in favor of fourths and fifths. In their melodies, the songs often use the pentatonic scale or similar “gapped” (fewer than seven-note) scales.

Sacred Harp singers view their tradition as a participatory one, not a passive one. Those who gather for a singing sing for themselves and for each other, and not for an audience. This can be seen in several aspects of the tradition.
First, the seating arrangement. The singers arrange themselves in a hollow square, with rows of chairs or pews on each side assigned to each of the four parts: treble, alto, tenor, and bass. The treble and tenor sections are usually mixed, with men and women singing the notes an octave apart. This arrangement is clearly intended for the singers, not for external listeners. Non-singers are always welcome to attend a singing, but typically they sit among the singers in the back rows of the tenor section, rather than in a designated separate audience location.

The leader, equidistant from all sections, in principle hears the best sound. The often intense sonic experience of standing in the center of the square is considered one of the benefits of leading, and sometimes a guest will be invited as a courtesy to stand next to the leader during a song.

The music itself is also meant to be participatory. Most forms of choral composition place the melody on the top (treble) line, where it can be best heard by an audience, with the other parts written so as not to obscure the melody. In contrast, Sacred Harp composers have aimed to make each musical part singable and interesting in its own right, thus giving every singer in the group an absorbing task. For this reason, “bringing out the melody” is not a high priority in Sacred Harp composition, and indeed it is customary to assign the melody not to the trebles but to the tenors. Fuging tunes, in which each section gets its moment to shine, also illustrate the importance in Sacred Harp of maintaining the independence of each vocal part.

With the folk music revival of the 1960s and 1970s, inspired in large part by the earlier work of ethno-musicologists such as George Pullen Jackson and Alan Lomax, Sacred Harp singing returned to the northern United States once more, and spread throughout Europe. But all look to the South.

For Sacred Harp singers, the idealized homeland is the South, the bastion of a tradition constantly under attack from powerful cultural forces of assimilation. Singers’ identities are bound to the singing community, which as a strong network reinforces the ethos of the singing culture. Most singers trace their singing heritage through various lines of authority and practice within the tradition. As Kiri Miller writes, “The Sacred Harp diaspora is oriented around descent-based kinship discourses and a strong sense of obligation to a historical and geographical homeland in the South.” In spite of this commitment to tradition, regional styles have developed along different lines of the singing tradition. Some singers from certain regions in the Northeast, for example, often stomp their feet to keep with the fast-paced beat, while singers in the deep South may frown upon such northern enthusiasm as ostentatious excess.

Though Sacred Harp lyrics are explicitly and unapologetically Christian—often in a stark, 18th century sort of way—singers are not necessarily believers It is not uncommon at singings in the Northeast, for example, for the groups to be composed primarily of Jews, Buddhists, atheists, and secular agnostics. These religious signifiers fade away with the singing, however, and friendships easily develop between groups like plainclothes Anabaptist Christians from central Pennsylvania and gay agnostic Jews from Manhattan. As Kiri Miller describes, “Sacred Harp singing today bears the marks of its history as part of an American religious culture that has been disestablished, culturally pluralistic, structurally adaptable, and often empowering from its earliest days.” The affection Sacred Harp singers have for one another overcomes all the distinctions that plague the outside world.

Christian tradition, in both its scriptures and hymnody, encourages a lively imagination about future experiences of heaven and the fulfillment of time. This imagination about heaven, which pervades Christian texts, includes both impassioned singing and the overcoming of identity distinctions that separate humanity on earth—two key elements of Sacred Harp tradition. Psalm 22:27, for example, imagines the eschaton, when “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.”

In Revelation 5:7, all of creation joins with the saints to sing God’s praises in heaven. “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’” For the Jewish and Christian imaginations, singing is the appropriate response to God’s reign. This takes place where God’s presence dwells and when God’s work has been completed on earth.
For Sacred Harp singers, singing together is heaven, a way to transcendence that breaks down all the earthly barriers that may separate them. It is a participation in celestial realities in the present moment, a powerful and transformative experience that brings unity through a touch of the divine.

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I am the resurrection. These are sentences from the Burial Service of the Book of Common Prayer, set to music by the Elizabethan composer Thomas Morley (1507—1602).

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord:
he that believeth in me,
yea, though he were dead,
yet shall he live.
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me
shall never die.

I know that my redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
And though after my skin, worms destroy this body,
yet in my flesh shall I see God:
whom I shall see for myself
and mine eyes shall behold,
and not another.

We brought nothing into this world,
and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
blessed be the name of the Lord.

Here it is sung by Ferdinand’s Consort.

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Mount Calvary Music March 26, 2017

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Man born blind icon

The Healing of the Man Born Bind

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Laetare Sunday

March 26, 2017

Hymns

Immortal, invisible, God only wise

Jesus, lead the way

O for a thousand tongues to sing

Anthems

In Thee is gladness, Giovanni Gastoldi

Laetare Ierusalem, Henrich Isaac

Common

Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Merbecke

Immortal, Invisible, God only wise by William Chalmers Smith is a proclamation of the transcendence of God:  “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever” (1 Tim 17). No man has ever seen God, who dwells in inaccessible light that is darkness to mortal eyes. God lacks nothing (nor wanting) and never changes (nor wasting), and is undying, unlike mortals, who in a striking image “blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree, then wither and perish.” The original ending of the hymn completes the thought: “And so let Thy glory, almighty, impart, / Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.” “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18). Only in Jesus through the proclamation of the Gospel can we know the Father.

William Chalmers Smith color

Walter Chalmers Smith D. D. (1824-1908)  was educated at the Grammar School and University of that City. He pursued his Theological studies at Edinburgh, and was ordained Pastor of the Scottish Church in Chadwell Street, Islington, London, in 1850. After holding several pastorates he became, in 1876, Minister of the Free High Church, Edinburgh. The Free Church of Scotland elected him its moderator during its Jubilee year in 1893.

“From 1860 to 1893 Dr. Smith published the following volumes of verse: “The Bishop’s Walk” (1860); “Hymns of Christ and the Christian Life” (1867); “Olrig Grange” (1872); “Borland Hall” (1874); “Hilda; among the Broken Gods” (1878); “Raban; or, Life Splinters” (1880); “North Country Folk” (1883); “Kildrostan” (1884); “Thoughts and Fancies for Sunday Evenings” (1887); “A Heretic and other Poems” (1891); “Selections from the Poems of Walter C. Smith” (1893).

Although Dr. Smith’s work has a claim to a place among that of the general poets, there is a certain fitness in his being placed among the sacred poets, since the strongest force in his poetry is the religious one, so that, even in what may be called his secular poetry, the most vital parts grow out of his theologic thought or religious feeling. In this respect he is like the other poet of Aberdeenshire, George MacDonald, who says himself, that he would not care either to write poetry or tell stories if he could not preach in them—but then there is preaching and preaching; and if all preaching were of the living sort we get from these two Aberdonians, the name would carry a higher meaning than it usually does.” (William Horder)

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might:
thy justice, like mountains high soaring above,
thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life thou givest, to both great and small;
in all life thou livest, the true life of all;
we blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree,
then wither and perish, but naught changeth thee.

Thou reignest in glory, thou dwellest in light,
thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
all praise we would render; O help us to see
’tis only the splendor of light hideth thee!

The final stanzas have been somewhat altered from the original:

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
Of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.

All laud we would render; O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.

Williams, Evan; John Roberts (Ieuan Gwyllt) (1822-1877); Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/john-roberts-ieuan-gwyllt-18221877-121561

John Roberts, in Welsh Ieuan Gwyllt (1822-1877), composed the tune ST. DENIO (also known as JOANNA, or PALESTINA). It is derived from a Welsh folk song Can Mlynned i ‘nawr’ (“A Hundred Years from Now”). This version appeared in his Canaidau y Cyssegr (Songs of Worship) of 1839.  The melody was first harmonized to, adapted for, and used with Smith’s words in The English Hymnal of 1905-1906, edited by Gustav Theodore Holst (1874-1934). Roberts was a leader in the revival of Welsh choral song.

This hymn was sung in Westminster Abbey, London, England, at the 2002 funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. It is Prince Charles’s favorite hymn and was sung at his wedding to Camilla.  Here it is sung at a memorial service for the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and on the Pentagon in Washington from St Paul’s Cathedral, 14th September 2001.

As Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Christopher de Hamel has charge of The Gospels of St. Augustine, the very manuscript that Pope Gregory the Great (540—604) gave to St. Augustine of Canterbury (543—604) to take to England. De Hamel carried it in the procession of the enthronement of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2003.

Rowan Williams and Gospel Book

Rowan Williams venerating the Gospel Book of St. Augustine

In his book, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, de Hamel recounts:

“I had to enter the cathedral that day through the west door, joining the procession just as they began singing the first hymn, ‘immortal, invisible, God only wise,’ a Welsh tune in homage to the nationality of the new primate. I was holding the Gospels of St. Augustine open of a cushion. It was secured by two ribbons of transparent conservation tape. Upwards of 2,500 people singing a familiar hymn very loudly in an enclosed stone building makes the air vibrate. This is the nature of sound waves. The parchment leaves of the manuscript, as we saw earlier, are extremely fine and of tissue thinness, and they picked up the vibrations and they hummed and fluttered in time to the music. At that moment it was as if the sixth-century manuscript on its cushion had come to life and was taking part in the service.”

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Jesus, lead the way is a translation by the Episcopal clergyman Arthur W. Fandlander of the German hymn Jesu, geh’ voran, written by Nicolas Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf. It is a simple prayer for help in the difficulties and pains of life, and a reminder that the way of the cross leads home to God.

von Zinzendorf

Nicolas Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf

The tune SEELENBRÄUTIGAM (The Bridegroom of the soul) is by Adam Drese (1620—1701). In 1697 he wrote Seelenbräutigam, Jesus, Gottes lamm. In 1721 Von Zinzendorf wrote Seelenbräutigam, o du Gottes Lamm, and set it to Drese’s melody, thereby leading to a confusion between the two hymns. Von Zinzendorf later wrote Jesu, geh voran, which is set to Drese’s tune, and it is a translation of this hymn that we use in the 1940 Hymnal.

 

Arthur Farlander

Arthur William Farlander 

The version in the 1940 Hymnal is the translation by Arthur William Farlander (1898—1952). Farlander was born in Germany. Sometime in his early life he moved to the United States and was confirmed as an Episcopalian in the 1920s.  He was ordained in 1927. He was rector of a church in San Francisco, dean of St James Cathedral in Fresno, and later rector of churches in Santa Clara and Santa Rosa. He was on the twenty-four member committee which produced the 1940 Hymnal for which he helped translate six texts. He was a pioneer in Episcopal radio ministry.

Drese was at first musician at the court of Duke Wilhelm, of Sachse-Weimar; and after being sent by the Duke for further training under Marco Sacchi at Warsaw, was appointed his Kapellmeister in 1655. On the Duke’s death in 1662, his son, Duke Bernhard, took Drese with him to Jena, appointed him his secretary, and, in 1672, Town Mayor. After Duke Bernhard’s death, in 1678, Drese remained in Jena till 1683, when he was appointed Kapellmeister at Arnstadt to Prince Anton Günther of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, who required Drese to put aside secular music and concentrate on Pietist compositions. He died at Arnstadt shortly before J. S. Bach came there.

Jesus, led the way
Through our life’s long long day,
And with faithful footsteps steady,
We will follow, ever ready;
Guide us by Thy hand
To our fatherland.
Should our lot be hard,
Keep us on our guard;
Even through severest trial
Make us brave in self-denial
Transient pain may be,
But a way to Thee.

When we need relief,
From an inner grief,
Or when evils come alluring
Make us patient and enduring:
Let us follow still
Thy most holy will.

Order thou our ways,
When we need relief,
From an inner grief,
Or when evils come alluring
Make us patient and enduring:
Let us follow still
Thy most holy will.

Saviour, all our days:
Order thou our ways,
When we need relief,
From an inner grief,
Or when evils come alluring
Make us patient and enduring:
Let us follow still
Thy most holy will.

Here, with a somewhat different translation,  is a choral arrangement

Von Zinzendorf’s hymn:

Jesus, geh voran
auf der Lebensbahn;
und wir wollen nicht verweilen,
Dir getreulich nachzueilen,
führ uns an der Hand
bis ins Vaterland.

Soll’s uns hart ergehn
laß uns feste stehn,
und auch in den schwersten Tagen
niemals über Lasten klagen;
denn durch Trübsal hier
geht der Weg zu Dir.

Rühret eigner Schmerz
irgend unser Herz,
kümmert uns ein fremdes Leiden:
O so gib Geduld zu beiden.
Richte unsern Sinn
auf Dein Kommen hin.

Ordne unsern Gang,
Jesus, Leben slang.
durch rauhe Wege,
gib uns auch die nöt’ge Pflege.
Tu uns nach dem Lauf
Deine Türe auf.

Here is Bach’s 1697 arrangement of Jesu, geh voran, using Drese’s tune and words..

J.S. Bach in 1736 used Drese’s Seelenbraatigam, Jesus Gottes lamm as the basis for his cantata of that name (BWV 496). Here is a version and also the beginning.

And here is the complete text:

Seelenbräutigam,
Jesu, Gotteslamm!
habe Dank für deine Liebe,
die mich zieht aus reinem Triebe
von dem Sündenschlamm,
Jesu, Gotteslamm.

Deine Liebesglut
Licht stärket Mut und Blut,
wend nu freundlich mich anblickest
und an deine Brust mich drückest,
macht mich wohlgemut
deine Liebesglut.

Wahrer Mensch und Gott,
Tost in Not und Tod,
du bist darum Mensch geboren,
zu ersetzen, was verloren,
durch dein Blut so rot,
wahrer Mensch und Gott.

Meines Glaubens Licht
lass verlöschen nicht,
salbe mich mit Freudenöle,
dass hinfort in meiner Seele
ja verlösche nicht
deine Liebesglut.

So werd ich in dir
bleiben für und für,
deine Liebe will ich ehren
und in dir dein Lob vermehren,
weil ich für und für
bleiben werd in dir.

Held aus Davids Stamm,
deine Liebesflamm
mich ernähre, und verwehre,
dass die Welt mich nicht versehre,
ob sie mir gleich gram,
Held aus Davids Stamm.

Großer Friedensfürst,
wie hast du gedürst
nach der Menschen Heil und Leben
und dich in den Tod gegeben,
da du riefst: Mich dürst’,
großer Friedensfürst.

Deinen Frieden gib
aus so reiner Lieb,
uns, den Deinen, die dich kennen
und nach dir sich Christen nennen,
denen bist du lieb,
deinen Frieden gib.

Wer der Welt abstirbt,
emsig sich bewirbt
um den lebendigen Glauben,
der wird bald empfind1ich schauen,
dass niemand verdirbt,
wer der Welt abstirbt.

Nun ergreif ich dich,
ach! ergreife mich!
ich will nimmermehr dich lassen,
sondern gläubig dich umfassen,
weil im Glauben ich
nun ergreife dich.
Wenn ich weinen muss,
wird dein Tränenfluss
nun die meinen auch begleiten
und zu deinen Wunden leiten,
dass mein Tränenfluss
sich bald stillen muss.

Wenn ich mich aufs neu
wiederum erfreu,
freuest du dich auch zugleiche,
bis ich dort in deinem Reiche
ewiglich aufs neu
mich mit dir erfreu.

Hier durch Spott und Hohn,
dort die Ehrenkron;
hier im Hoffen und im Glauben,
dort im Haben und im Schauen;
denn die Ehrenkron
folgt auf Spott und Hohn.

Jesu, hilf, dass ich
allhier ritterlich
alles durch dich überwinde
und in deinem Sieg empfinde,
wie so ritterlich
du gekämpft für mich.

Du mein Preis und Ruhm,
werte Saronsblum,
in mir soll nun nichts erschallen
als was dir nur kann gefallen,
werte Saronsblum,
du mein Preis und Ruhm.

Schleiermacher also wrote a short hymn for this melody: Dienen Frieden gieb.

_____________________

Charles Wesley color

Charles Wesley

O for a thousand tongues to sing was written by Charles Wesley on the first anniversary of his conversion. In in May, 1738, he was suffering severely from pleurisy while he and his brother were studying under the Moravian scholar Peter Boehler in London. At the time, Wesley was plagued by extreme doubts about his faith. Taken to bed with the sickness, on May 21 Wesley was attended by a group of Christians who offered him testimony and basic care, and he was deeply affected by this. He read from his Bible and found himself deeply affected by the words, and at peace with God. Shortly his strength began to return. He wrote of this experience in his journal, and counted it as a renewal of his faith. Charles composed this hymn in 1739. Because of the benefactions that God has made us in creating, redeeming, and sanctifying us, our overwhelming desire should be to praise God in word and deed in gratitude for what He has done,  so that all may know of His great deeds.

This is the version we will use:

1 O for a thousand tongues to sing
my dear Redeemer’s praise,
the glories of my God and King,
the triumphs of his grace!
2 Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
that bids our sorrows cease;
’tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’tis life and health and peace.
3 He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
he sets the prisoner free:
his blood can make the foulest clean;
his blood availed for me.
4 He speaks; and, listening to his voice,
new life the dead receive,
the mournful broken hearts rejoice,
the humble poor believe.
5 Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb,
your loosened tongues employ;
ye blind, behold your Saviour come;
and leap, ye lame, for joy!
6 My gracious Master and my God,
assist me to proclaim
and spread through all the earth abroad
the honours of thy name.

Here it is sung at Coral Ridge Presbyterian.

Charles Wesley in his journal:

“May 21, 1738. I waked in expectation of His coming. At nine my brother and some friends came and sang a hymn to the Holy Ghost. My comfort and hope were hereby increased. In about half an hour they went. I betook myself to prayer the substance as follows: O Jesus, thou hast said, I will come unto you; thou hast said, I will send the Comforter unto you. thou hast said, My Father and I will come unto you, and make our abode with you. Thou art my God, who canst not lie. I wholly rely upon thy most true promise: accomplish it in thy time and manner.…Still I felt a violent opposition and reluctance to believe, yet still the Spirit of God strove with my own and the evil spirit till by degrees he chased away the darkness of my unbelief. I found myself convinced, I knew not how or when, and immediately fell to intercession.”

One year from the experience, Wesley was taken with the urge to write another hymn, this one in commemoration of his renewal of faith. This hymn took the form of an 18-stanza poem, beginning with the opening lines ‘Glory to God, and praise, and love,/Be ever, ever given’ and was published in 1740 and entitled ‘For the anniversary day of one’s conversion’. The seventh verse, which begins, ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing’, and which now is invariably the first verse of a shorter hymn, recalls Böhler’s words, ‘Had I a thousand tongues I would praise Him with them all’. The hymn was placed first in John Wesley’s A Collection of Hymns for the People Called Methodists published in 1780 and has always been the first hymn in every Methodist hymnal since then.

Here are all the original stanzas of the hymn:

1. Glory to God, and praise and love,
Be ever, ever given;
By saints below and saints above,
The Church in earth and heaven.
2. On this glad day the glorious Sun
Of righteousness arose,
On my benighted soul he shone,
And filled it with repose.
3. Sudden expired the legal strife;
‘Twas then I ceased to grieve.
My second, real, living life,
I then began to live.
4. Then with my heart I first believed,
Believed with faith divine;
Power with the Holy Ghost received
To call the Saviour mine.
5. I felt my Lord’s atoning blood
Close to my soul applied;
Me, me he loved – the Son of God
For me, for me he died!
6. I found and owned his promise true,
Ascertained of my part,
My pardon passed in heaven I know,
When written on my heart.
7. O For a thousand tongues to sing
My dear Redeemer’s praise!
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace!
8. My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the world abroad
The honors of Thy name.
9. Jesus! the Name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
‘Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
‘Tis life, and health, and peace.
10. He breaks the power of cancell’d sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood avail’d for me.
11. He speaks, – and, listening to his voice,
New life the dead receive;
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice;
The humble poor believe.
12. Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb,
Your loosen’d tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come,
And leap, ye lame, for joy.
13. Look unto him, ye nations; own
Your God, ye fallen race;
Look, and be saved through faith alone,
Be justified by grace.
14. See all your sins on Jesus laid;
The Lamb of God was slain;
His soul was once an offering made
For every soul of man.
15. Harlots, and publicans, and thieves,
In holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes,
From crimes as great as mine.
16. Murderers, and all ye hellish crew,
Ye sons of lust and pride,
Believe the Savior died for you;
For me the Saviour died.
17. Awake from guilty nature’s sleep,
And Christ shall give you light,
Cast all your sins into the deep,
And wash the AEthiop white.
18. With me, your chief, ye then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below,
And own that love is heaven.

In the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal, the first hymn is still O for a thousand tongues to sing; it uses verses 7,8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and a slightly altered version of verse 18. The next page has all the verses except verse 17 (not surprisingly). That verse is not racist, but allusion to Jeremiah 13: 23-24:

Can the Ethiopian change his skin
    or the leopard his spots?
Then also you can do good
    who are accustomed to do evil.

The point is that Christ can transform a sinner into a saint.

AZMON was composed by the German composer and conductor Carl Gotthölf Glaser (1784-1829). In 1839 Lowell Mason arranged  AZMON as a setting for this hymn. Azmon means “strong,” and is a place on the southern boundary of the Holy Land, apparently near the torrent of Egypt (Wadi el-Arish). (Numbers 34:4,5). Charles Ives used the tune in Symphony No. 3, The Camp Meeting. AZMON and ERIE (What a friend we have in Jesus) are the primary source materials for the first movement, subtitled ‘Old Folks Gatherin’.

______________________________

Anthems

In Thee is gladness amid all sadness,
Jesus, day-star of my heart!
By Thee are given the gifts of heaven,
thou the true Redeemer art!
Our souls thou wakest;
our bonds thou breakest.
Who trusts Thee surely
has built securely and stands forever: Allelujah!
Our hearts are longing to see thy dawning.
Living or dying, in thee abiding,
naught can us sever: Allelujah!

Jesus is ours!
We fear no powers,
not of earth or sin or death.
He sees and blesses in worst distresses;
he can change them with a breath.
Wherefore the story –
tell of His glory with hearts and voices;
all heaven rejoices in him forever: Allelujah!
We shout for gladness,
triumph o’er sadness,
love him and praise him,
and still shall raise him
glad hymns forever: Allelujah!

Here it is sung by a choir at St. Olaf.


The anthem In Thee is gladness is a translation by Catherine Winkworth of Johannes Lindemann’s In dir ist Freude. On Laetare Sunday we pause in our time of penitence to look forward to the joy of Easter.  The hymn proclaims  that Jesus is the “day-star of my heart,” the source of our hope. The first stanza alludes to Romans 8:38-39: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  .  The second stanza draws from Romans 8:31, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Even the dance-like character of the music seems to defy the struggles of life because of the hope that Jesus offers to all. Indeed, the hymn concludes with “shout[s] for gladness, triumph o’er sadness . . . [and] voices raising glad hymns forever. Alleluia!”Catherine_Winkworth

Catherine Winkworth

Catherine Winkworth (13 September 1827 – 1 July 1878) was born at 20 Ely Place, Holborn, on the edge of the City of London. She was the fourth daughter of Henry Winkworth, a silk merchant. In 1829, her family moved to Manchester, where her father had a silk mill. Winkworth lived most of her early life in this great city, engine of the Industrial Revolution. Winkworth studied under the Rev. William Gaskell, minister of Cross Street Chapel, and with Dr. James Martineau, both of them eminent British Unitarians. She subsequently moved with the family to Clifton, near Bristol. Her sister Susanna Winkworth (1820–1884) was also a translator, mainly of German devotional works. Winkworth translated biographies of two founders of sisterhoods for the poor and the sick: Life of Pastor Fliedner, 1861, and Life of Amelia Sieveking, 1863. She is best known for bringing the German chorale tradition to English speakers with her numerous translations of church hymns, which were published in the Lyra Germanica.

Lyra Germanica

She also worked for wider educational opportunities for girls and  in promoting women’s rights, as the secretary of the Clifton Association for Higher Education for Women, and a supporter of the Clifton High School for Girls, where a school house is named after her, and a member of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She was likewise governor of the Red Maids’ School in Westbury-on-Trym in the city of Bristol.

According to the Encyclopedia of Britain by Bamber Gascoigne (1993), it was Catherine Winkworth who, learning of General Charles James Napier’s ruthless and unauthorised, but successful campaign to conquer the Indian province of Sindh, “remarked to her teacher that Napier’s despatch to the governor-general of India, after capturing Sindh, should have been Peccavi (Latin for ‘I have sinned’: a pun on ‘I have Sindh’). She sent her joke to the new humorous magazine Punch, which printed it on 18 May 1844. She was then sixteen years old. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations attributes this to Winkworth, noting that it was attributed to her in Notes and Queries in May 1954.The pun has usually been credited to Napier.] The rumour’s persistence over the decades led to investigations in Calcutta archives, as well as comments by William Lee-Warner in 1917 and Lord Zetland, Secretary for India, in 1936.

Catherine Winkworth died suddenly of heart disease near Geneva on 1 July 1878 and was buried in Monnetier, in Upper Savoy. A monument to her memory was erected in Bristol Cathedral. She is commemorated as a hymn writer with John Mason Neale on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 7 August.

Cantor Johann Lindemann (1549-1631), relative of Martin Luther, was a signer of the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577). Lindemann attended the gymnasium (high school) in Gotha and then studied at the University of Jena. He returned to Gotha, where he served on the council and became a cantor in several churches (1580-1631). He wrote this text to fit the tune by Gastoldi. It was published in Amorum filii Dei decades duae … Zwantzig Weyhenachten Gesenglein … zum Theil unter … Madrigalia und Balletti (Erfurt, 1594, 1596 and 1598), a three-volume anthology of contrafacta of five-part Italian secular pieces. Eight are by Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi, and the Latin title of the collection may perhaps be seen as recalling Gastoldi’s pieces Amor, tu che congiungi and Filli vezzosa e lieta. Lindemann’s uncle, Cyriak Lindemann, probably knew Georg Fabricius, one of the leading hymnologists of the Reformation period, who studied in Italy for four years. Johannes Lindemann’s particular significance is as one of the first to marry the Italian madrigal with the chorale tradition of central Germany and Thuringia. An illustration is afforded by this chorale In dir ist Freude, a contrafactum of Gastoldi’s L’innamorato; it became one of the best-known Protestant chorales.

Gastoldi

Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi

The tune IN DIR IST FREUDE, adapted from Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi’s (c. 1554-1609) balletto, “Al­i­eta vi­ta,” in  Ba­let­ti a cinque vo­ci. It is characterized as being a “light-hearted, dancelike piece” which contained a fa-la-la (nonsense syllable) refrain. Gastoldi was an Italian priest and composer who had a great influence on several great composers of his era including Claudio Monteverdi, Hans Leo Hassler, and Thomas Morely.  The tune was not paired with the text until 1863 when it was published in the Chorale Book for England: A Complete Hymn Book for Public and Private Worship, in accordance with the Services and Festivals of the Church of England under the section heading “Love to the Savior.”

A Digression on Contrafacta

from WPWT

The absence of contrast between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ styles of music in the Middle Ages] can be shown simply by the observation that a secular song, if given a set of sacred words, could serve as sacred music, and vice versa. Only recently has it been recognized how frequently such interchange took place, and the more we learn about medieval music, the more important it becomes. The practice of borrowing a song from one sphere and making it suitable for use in the other by the substitution of words is known as “parody” or contrafactum.’

The contrafactum (plural contrafacta) may operate in either direction: to provide pious words to fit a secular song, or profane words to fit a religious song. It may involve ‘parody’ in the literary sense, offering purposeful variations on the words of the original song, but sometimes there may be only a more general contrast in content between the two songs, or even no obvious relationship at all between them. Although in some cases it is possible to tell which came first, the religious or the secular version, in others it is less clear in which direction the process operated.

Examples of this can be found particularly in Goliardic verse, which sometimes parodies the forms of hymns and the church services; for instance, the first line of the sixth-century Latin hymn for Prime, Iam lucis orto sidere, which celebrates control of both the emotions and the appetites (potus cibique parcitas, ‘restraint in food and drink’), is borrowed to introduce a twelfth-century drinking song:

Iam lucis orto sidere
Deum precamur supplices
ut in diurnis actibus
Nos servet a nocentibus . . . Now at the dawning of the day
To God as suppliants we pray
That from our daily round he may
All harmful beings keep away . . .
becomes:
Iam lucis orto sidere
statim oportet bibere;
Bibamus nunc egregie
Et rebibamus hodie . . . Now at the dawning of the day
We must start drinking straight away;
Let’s drink now till the drink’s all gone,
And have another later on . . .

This kind of contrafactum becomes commoner in the later Middle Ages; it is particularly associated, from the early thirteenth century onwards, with the work of the friars, who often supplied pious words to be sung to popular secular tunes (a device later to be taken over, for similar reasons, by the Salvation Army, on the principle ‘Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?’). St Francis described his followers as joculatores Dei, ‘God’s minstrels’. An example of this can be found in the Red Book of Ossory (Bishop’s Palace, Kilkenny), which includes 60 Latin lyrics in two hands of the late C14, accompanied by a note:

Attende, lector, qu[o]d Episcopus Ossoriensis fecit istas cantilenas pro vicariis Ecclesie Cathedralis sacerdotibus et clericis suis ad cantandum in magnis festis et solaciis, ne guttura eorum et ora Deo sanctificata polluantur cantilenis teatralibus, turpibus et secularibus, et cum sint cantatores prouideant sibi de notis conuenientibus secundum quod dictamina requirunt.
Be advised, reader, that the Bishop of Ossory [the Franciscan friar Richard de Ledrede, d. 1360] has made these songs for the vicars of the cathedral church, for the priests, and for the clerks, to be sung on the important holidays and at celebrations in order that their throats and mouths, consecrated to God, may not be polluted by songs which are lewd, secular, and associated with revelry, and, since they are trained singers, let them provide themselves with suitable tunes according to what these sets of words require.

Twenty five of the Latin lyrics are on the Nativity or related themes, 11 on Easter and the Resurrection, one on the Annunciation, the rest on various devotional topics. Some of them are accompanied by introductory fragments of English or French verse, whose form (though not content) they seem to echo: e.g. the first line of the popular dance-song ‘Maiden on the moor’ (‘A maiden stayed on the moor for a full week and a day . . .’) prefaces a lyric on the Nativity:

Maiden in the mor lay,
in the mor lay,
seuenyst[es] fulle,
seuenist[es] fulle.
Maiden in the mor lay–
in the mor lay–
seuenistes fulle,
[seuenistes fulle,
fulle] ant a day… Peperit virgo,
Virgo regia,
Mater orphanorum,
Mater orphanorum,
Peperit virgo,
Virgo regia,
Mater orphanorum,
mater orphanorum,
Plena gracia… A virgin gave birth,
A royal virgin,
Mother of orphans,
Mother of orphans,
A virgin gave birth,
A royal virgin,
Mother of orphans,
Mother of orphans,
Full of grace…

LP’s addition: O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden was set to a love song, Innsbruck ich muss dich lassen; Good King Wenceslaus to the the spring carol Tempus adest floridum; What Child is This to a ballad about a woman of dubious virtue –Greensleeves; the Star Spangled Banner to a drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven [try hitting those high notes after 6 glasses of port]. Contemporary composers use it. “Come to Me,” also known as “Fantine’s Death,” is sung in the first act of ‘Les Miserables.’ “On My Own,” the contrafactum of “Come to Me,” is performed during the second act of the show.  “Comme d’habitude“, music by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, original French lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibaut, was rewritten as “My Way” with English lyrics by Paul Anka.  In Japan, the Scots song “Auld Lang Syne” has a new set of words in the song “Hotaru no hikari” (lit. “The light of the firefly”), and is used at graduation ceremonies [inscrutable]. There are of course many ad hoc parodies when students discover that O my darling Clementine has the same meter as Tantum ergo.)

____________________

Laetare Jerusalem: et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam.
Gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristitia fuistis:
Ut exsultetis, et satiemini ab uberibus consolationis vestrae.

Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and come together all you that love her.
Rejoice with gladness, you that have been in sorrow:
That you may exult, and be filled from the breasts of your consolation.

Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Nederlandish composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of  Josquin des Prez, his influence was especially pronounced in Germany, due to the connection he maintained with the Hapsburg court. He was the first significant master of the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style who both lived in German-speaking areas, and whose music was widely distributed there. It was through him that the polyphonic style of the Netherlands became widely accepted in Germany, making possible the further development of contrapuntal music there. His best known composition is Innbruck, ich muss dich lassen, the melody of which was used for O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (O Sacred Head Surrounded)(see Digression on Contrafacta above.)

Isaac is held in high regard for his Choralis Constantinus. It is a huge anthology of over 450 chant-based polyphonic motets for the Proper of the Mass. It had its origins in a commission that Isaac received from the Cathedral in Konstanz, Germany in April 1508 to set many of the Propers unique to the local liturgy. Isaac was in Konstanz because Maximilian had called a meeting of the Reichstag (German Parliament of nobles) there and Isaac was on hand to provide music for the Imperial court chapel choir. After the deaths of both Maximilian and Isaac, Ludwig Senfl, who had been Isaac’s pupil as a member of the Imperial court choir, gathered all the Isaac settings of the Proper and placed them into liturgical order for the church year. But the anthology was not published until 1555, after Senfl’s death, by which time the reforms of the Council of Trent had made many of the texts obsolete. The motets remain some of the finest examples of chant-based Renaissance polyphony in existence. The motet Laetare Ierusalem is from this collection.

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Amoris Laetitia and Exceptionless Norms

in Moral Theology, Pope Francis 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Pope Francis Catholic

I had lunch with Father Thomas Weinandy this past Saturday; he is a Capuchin, the former Warden of Greyfriars s in Oxford and the former doctrinal consultant to the USCCB. He and a group of other theologians published a critique of Amoris Laetitia, and he reiterated his unhappiness with the ambiguity of the document, which seems to allow access to the sacraments to the divorced and remarried, even if they continue to have intercourse. The document is ambiguous, but Pope Francis in a private letter to the Argentine bishops said that indeed that was a valid interpretation.

Weinandy said that intercourse in such circumstances was adultery, forbidden by the Commandments and reinforced by Jesus when he forbade divorce and remarriage. Francis seems to follow those theologians who see obedience to the commandments, at least in sexual matters, as an ideal; but the commandment that forbids adultery is not an ideal, but a command. It is not optional. Obedience to the commandments is required to be in a state of grace and to receive the sacraments.

But I think that Pope Francis, in his work in the barrios of Buenos Aires, frequently encountered situations like these:

  1. A man and a woman living in a stable relationship with children.
  2. A man and a woman living in a civil marriage with children.
  3. A man and a women, one or both of whom had been in a sacramental marriage, living in a stable relationship or civil marriage with children.

What might well happen is that one partner, and I suspect almost always the woman, would have pangs of conscience about their relationship and seek counsel in confession.

The man might not even be a Christian, and even if Catholic might well be, like many Hispanics, anticlerical.

In case one or two, the man might refuse to have the church witness the marriage.

In case three he might well refuse to cease intercourse.

If the woman denies him intercourse, he might well abandon the family, leaving the children without a father and without provision.

The woman is willing to enter into a sacramental marriage (case 1 and 2) or to cease intercourse (case 3), but cannot get her partner to agree.

What is a priest to do? If he insists that the woman deny her partner intercourse before she can receive the sacraments, he might well break up a stable union and the children would suffer, perhaps severely.

In case one and two, she is committing fornication every time she has intercourse; in case three she is committing adultery.

Father Weinandy said these are hard cases, but I suspect they are not at all uncommon, especially among the poor of South America.

Should a priest deny access to the sacraments to the woman? She wants to obey the commandments.

My wife and I have been watching British mysteries; a constant theme is that when the guilty are caught and punished, the innocent suffer as well. Who wants to tell a wife and children that the man in the house is a pedophile or a murderer?

Sometimes there is no way to avoid hurting the innocent. But even detectives, and even more so priests, seek way to avoid hurting children.

I think this is what Francis has encountered. Those who take the strictest line say, Fiat iustitia, ruat caelum; but if at all possible mercy and compassion should be shown to the innocent, the children whose lives would be disrupted at best and perhaps ruined if the priest insists on the strictest obedience to the commandments.

It is hard to justify theologically allowing the woman to receive the sacraments, and Francis made no attempt to do so. It is somewhat like the conundrums surrounding  lying. Augustine and Aquinas said that is never under any circumstance allowed to tell a lie – it is an exceptionless norm. But what were the Jesuits to do who had to take on false identities to minister during the English Mission? Or resistance fighters who were protecting Jews from the Nazis?

Can an exceptionless norm have exceptions? Or is willingness to obey the equivalent to obedience to the norm, even if obedience is impossible without injuring the innocent? I don’t know.

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Mount Calvary Music March 19

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Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, Veronese

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Lent III

March 19, 2017

Hymns

When I survey the wondrous cross

Just as I am

I bind unto myself today

Anthems

I Heard the, Voice of Jesus Say, Bonar, Vaughan Willaims

Sicut cervus, Palestrina

Common

Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Merbecke

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When I survey the wondrous cross by Isaac Watts (1674—1748). When preparing for a communion service in 1707, when he himself was thirty-three years old, Watts wrote this personal expression of gratitude for the love that Christ revealed by His death on the cross. Watts echoes Paul: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6: 14). The third stanza repeats almost verbatim phrases from St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s hymn “Salve mundi salutare”:  such sentiments would be felt by any sincere Christian who meditated upon the crucifixion.

Monument to Isaac Watts, Westminster Abbey

Monument to Isaac Watts, Westminster Abbey

During Watt’s early life, Calvinist sentiments in England, especially among Nonconformists, barred any music in church except psalm singing, and Watts knew how dreary it could be. He commented, “The singing of God’s praise is the part of worship most closely related to heaven; but its performance among us is the worst on earth.” (Things have not changed much.)

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Salve, mundi salutare. This hymn is variously attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, and Arnulph von Löwen.

Salve, mundi salutare:
Salve, salve, Jesu chare,
Cruci tuae me aptare
Vellem vere, tu scis quare
Da mihi tui copiam.
Ac si praesens sis accedo,
Immo te praesentem credo.
O quam nudum hic te cerno!
Ecce tibi me prosterno:
Sis facilis ad veniam.

Clavos pedum, plagas duras
Et tam graves impressuras
Circumplector cum affectu,
Tuo pavens in aspectu,
Meorum memor vulnerum.
Grates tantae caritati,
Nos agamus vulnerati.
O amator peccatorum,
Reparator confractorum:
O dulcis pater pauperum!

Quidquid est in me confractum
Dissipatum, aut distractum,
Dulcis Jesu, totum sana,
Tu restaura, tu complana,
Tam pio medicamine.
Te in tua cruce quaero,
Prout queo, corde mero;
Me sanabis hic, ut spero:
Sana me, et salvus ero,
In tuo lavans sanguine.

Plagas tuas rubicundas,
Et fixuras tam profundas,
Cordi meo fac inscribi,
Ut configar totus tibi,
Te modis amans omnibus.
Dulcis Jesu, pie Deus,
Ad te clamo licet reus:
Praebe mihi te benignum,
Ne repellas me indignum
De tuis sanctis pedibus

Coram cruce procumbentem,
Hosque pedes complectentem,
Jesu bone, non me spernas,
Sed de cruce sancta cernas
Compassionis gratia.
In hac cruce stans directe,
Vide me, o mi dilecte,
Totum te ad me converte:
Esto sanus, dic aperte,
Dimitto tibi omnia.

The tune is ROCKINGHAM. Edward Miller (1735 —1807) adapted ROCKINGHAM from an earlier tune, TUNEBRIDGE, which had been published in Aaron Williams’s A Second Supplement to Psalmody in Miniature (c. 1780). Its name refers to a friend and patron of Edward Miller, the Marquis of Rockingham, who served twice as Great Britain’s prime minister.

Miller’s father had made his living laying brick roads, and the young Edward became an apprentice in the same trade. Unhappy with that profession, however, he ran away to the town of Lynn and studied music with Charles Burney, the most prominent music historian of his day. A competent flute and organ player, he was organist at the parish church in Doncaster from 1756 to 1807. Miller was active in the musical life of the Doncaster region and composed keyboard sonatas and church music. His most influential publications were The Psalms of David for the Use of Parish Churches (1790), in which he sought to reform metrical psalmody (and which included ROCKINGHAM), and David’s Harp (1805), an important Methodist tunebook issued by Miller with his son.

Here is King’s College.

A Digression on English Hymnody

J. F. Coltheart describes the development of English hymnody after the Reformation and the impedance of Watts:

“In the new ritual that had to be made, Cranmer omitted all hymns. Ordinary citi­zens could not read Latin and without choirs of monks who were experienced in plain-song tunes, congregational singing was impossible. Thus was discarded, at a stroke, the hymnology that the Roman Church had built up during a thousand years.

Glorious hymns such as Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Jesu, the Very Thought of Thee, With Sweetness Fills My Breast,” were lost sight of in English-speaking Christendom until the middle of the nineteenth century. Medieval hymns from the time of Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis, along with hymns from the days of Charlemagne and even from the time of the barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries, were all swept out of sight for three hundred years. Treasures like Bernard of Cluny’s “Jerusa­lem the Golden,” the sixth century “O Christ, Our King, Creator, Lord,” the ninth century “Creator Spirit, by Whose Aid,” the incomparably beautiful “Jesu, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts,” “Jerusalem, My Happy Home,” and many others were dis­carded in the urgent clamor to dispense with anything connected with Rome. Bai­ley says, “Cranmer has made a clean sweep of the hymnic treasure of the centuries.”

It was during the reign of Henry’s suc­cessor, the boy king Edward VI, that the singing of psalms became popular. Thomas Sternhold, a Groom of the Robes, set Psalm 23 to a Genevan tune, and the youthful monarch liked it so much that he commis­sioned Sternhold to produce more. In 1549 there appeared the book by Sternhold “Certayne Psalmes, chose out of the Psalter of David and drawe into Englishe metre by Thomas Sternhold, grome of ye kynge’s Maiesties robes.” This was the beginning of an endless procession of Metrical Psal­ters that dominated the Established Church and the Non-Conformists for centuries, un­til the genius of Isaac Watts “broke its stranglehold and led the way to the use of true hymns of ‘human composure.’

With the coming of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English hymnology cast aside the Psalter, and the hymns of human compo­sure came into being. Our hymnals today are liberally sprinkled with Watts’s hymns —”When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Praise Ye the Lord,” “O God, Our Help,” “I Sing the Mighty Power,” “Joy to the World,” “Jesus Invites His Saints,” “Come, We that Love the Lord,” et cetera.

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Just as I am by Charlotte Elliott (1789–1871). Elliott was an invalid most of her life and was distressed by her inability to help spread the Gospel. She confided to a clergyman her distress that she was unable to offer any service to God. The clergyman told her that “you must come as you are—a sinner— to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” When we sin, we, like Adam, want to hide from the face of God. We have nothing to offer Him but He calls and commands us, “Come!” We come in repentance and sorrow to receive his great gift: Himself in the Eucharist.

Charlotte elliott elderly

Charlotte Elliott

Miss Elliott was the daughter of Charles Elliott of Clapham and Brighton and grand-daughter of the Rev. H. Venn of Huddersfield. She was born March 18th. 1789. The first 32 years of her life were spent mostly at Clapham. In 1823 she removed to Brighton and died there Sept. 22nd. 1871. To her acquaintance with Dr. C. Malan of Geneva is attributed much of the deep spiritual-mindedness which is so pronounced in her hymns. Though weak and feeble in body, she possessed a strong imagination and a well cultured and intellectual mind. Her love of poetry and music was great and is reflected in her verse. Her hymns number about 150, a large proportion of which is in common use. The finest and most widely known of these are: “Just as I am” and “My God, my Father while I stray”. Her verse is characterized by tenderness of feeling, plaintive simplicity, deep devotion and perfect rhythm. For those in sickness and sorrow, she has sung as few others have done.

The history of the writing of “Just as I am, without one plea”.— In the Record, Oct. 15th. 1897, Bishop H.C.G. Moule of Durham, the Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, gave a most interesting account of Miss Elliott, and the origin of this hymn. Dr. Moule, who is related to the family, derived his information from family sources. In an abbreviated form, this is the beautiful story — “Ill health still beset her. Besides its general trying influence on the spirit, it often caused her the peculiar pain of a seeming uselessness in her life, while the circle round her was full of unresting serviceableness for God. Such a time of trial marked the year 1834, when she was 45 years old and was living in Westfield Lodge, Brighton … Her brother, the Rev. H.V. Elliott, had not long before conceived the plan of St. Mary’s Hall at Brighton, a school designed to give at nominal cost, a high education to the daughters of clergymen; a noble work which is to this day carried on with admirable ability and large success. In aid to St.Mary’s Hall there was to be held a bazaar… Westfield Lodge was all astir; every member of the large circle was occupied morning and night in preparation with the one exception of the ailing sister Charlotte — as full of eager interest as any of them, but physically fit for nothing. The night before the bazaar she was kept wakeful by distressing thoughts of her apparent uselessness; and these thoughts passed by a transition easy to imagine into a spiritual conflict until she questioned the reality of her whole spiritual life, and wondered whether it was anything better after all than an illusion of the emotions, an illusion ready to be sorrowfully dispelled. The next day, the busy day of the bazaar …. the troubles of the night came back upon her with such force that she felt they must be met and conquered by the grace of God. She gathered up in her soul the grand certainties, not of her emotions, but of her salvation: her Lord; His power: His promise. And taking pen and paper from the table she deliberately set down in writing for her own comfort the formulae of her faith … so in verse she restated to herself the Gospel of pardon, peace and heaven…. there, then, always, not at some past moment, but “even now” she was accepted in the Beloved, “Just as I am”. As the day wore on, her sister-in-law, Mrs. H.V. Elliott, came in to see her and bring news of the work. She read the hymn and asked (she well might) for a copy. So it first stole out from that quiet room into the world, where for sixty years it has been sowing and reaping, until a multitude which only God can number has been blessed through the message”.

Just as I am – without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – though toss’d about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need, in Thee to find,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – Thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down;
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – of that free love
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
Here for a season, then above,
– O Lamb of God, I come!

The tune is ST. CRISPIN, composed by Sir George Job Elvey. He was born at Canterbury on 29 March 1816, was a son of John Elvey. For several generations, his family had been connected with the musical life of the cathedral city. At an early age, he was admitted as a chorister of Canterbury Cathedral, under Highmore Skeats, his brother, Stephen Elvey, being then master of the boys.

In 1830, Stephen Elvey having been appointed organist of New College, Oxford, George went to reside with him, and completed his musical education under his brother’s guidance. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Cipriani Potter and Dr Crotch.

Before he was seventeen, he had become a very expert organist and took temporary duty at Christ Church, Magdalen, and New College. In 1834, he gained the Gresham gold medal for his anthem, ‘Bow down Thine ear, Lord.’ In 1835, he succeeded Skeats as organist of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Among his earliest pupils were Prince George, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, for whose confirmation he composed his well-known anthem, ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’

He matriculated from New College on 17 May 1838 and graduated Mus. Bac. on 2 June following, his exercise being an oratorio, ‘The Resurrection and Ascension,’ afterwards performed by the Sacred Harmonic Society at Exeter Hall (12 November 1838), and subsequently at Boston, United States of America, and at Glasgow. On 2 July 1840, by a special dispensation of the chancellor of the university, Elvey graduated Mus. Doc. two years earlier than was allowed by the statutes. His exercise on this occasion was the anthem, ‘The ways of Zion do mourn.’ Two anthems, with orchestral accompaniments, ‘The Lord is King,’ and ‘Sing, Heavens,’ were written respectively for the Gloucester festival of 1853 and the Worcester festival of 1857.

Of his best-known works produced chiefly between 1856 and 1860 many were composed for special services at St. George’s Chapel. By the death of the Prince Consort in 1861, Elvey lost one of his most sympathetic patrons. The funeral anthems, ‘The Souls of the Righteous’ and ‘Blessed are the Dead,’ were both written for anniversary services in memory of the prince. For the marriage of the Prince of Wales (1863) he composed a special anthem, with organ and orchestral accompaniment, ‘Sing unto God,’ and for the marriage of Princess Louise (1871) a festal march which attained considerable popularity.

He was knighted on 24 March 1871. The last important public event in which he took part was the marriage of the Duke of Albany at St. George’s Chapel on 6 May 1882. In June of that year, he resigned his post as organist. After some years spent in retirement he died at the Towers, Windlesham, on 9 September 1893.

His most famous work is probably the hymn tune DIADEMATA, to which “Crown Him With Many Crowns” is set. A memoir of him, by his widow, was published in 1894. The Hymn “Come, Ye thankful People, Come” to his tune “St. George’s Windsor” is also well-known.

The Washington Cathedral choir sings Just as I am.

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St Patrick Icon

I bind unto myself today. St. Patrick’s Lorica or Breastplate. According to legend, on the way to Tara, St. Patrick and his monks was hunted by the scouts of the pagan king Loegaire mac Neill. Patrick sang this poem, which may be modeled after the incantations of the Druids, and the scouts saw Patrick as a deer and his men as fawns; therefore the poem is also called The Deer’s Cry.

The themes of this hymn reflect St. Patrick’s preparation for spiritual battle as recorded in his autobiographical Confession. With the whole armor of Christ, Patrick won Ireland for teh Church, and this hymn is a powerful model for our own spiritual battles.

Liber Hymnorum

Liber Hymnorum

The prayer is part of the Liber Hymnorum, a collection of hymns found in two manuscripts kept in Dublin and published in 1903 in the Thesaurus Paleohibernicus.

Here is a literal translation from the Old Irish:

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of the Invocation of the Trinity:
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.
I bind to myself today
The virtue of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism,
The virtue of His crucifixion with His burial,
The virtue of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
The virtue of His coming on the Judgement Day.
I bind to myself today
The virtue of the love of seraphim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the hope of resurrection unto reward,
In prayers of Patriarchs,
In predictions of Prophets,
In preaching of Apostles,
In faith of Confessors,
In purity of holy Virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendour of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The compactness of rocks.
I bind to myself today
God’s Power to guide me,
God’s Might to uphold me,
God’s Wisdom to teach me,
God’s Eye to watch over me,
God’s Ear to hear me,
God’s Word to give me speech,
God’s Hand to guide me,
God’s Way to lie before me,
God’s Shield to shelter me,
God’s Host to secure me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the seductions of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against everyone who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
Whether few or with many.
I invoke today all these virtues
Against every hostile merciless power
Which may assail my body and my soul,
Against the incantations of false prophets,
Against the black laws of heathenism,
Against the false laws of heresy,
Against the deceits of idolatry,
Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids,
Against every knowledge that binds the soul of man.
Christ, protect me today
Against every poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against death-wound,
That I may receive abundant reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in the fort,
Christ in the chariot seat,
Christ in the poop [deck],
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

Each verse of the prayer begins “Atomruig indiu” “I arise today” or “I bind unto myself today” and this phrase is repeated at the beginning of most of the verses.

The Liber hymnorum also tells us why we should sing:

Whoever should recite the hymnody, would be making a song of praise dear to God, for it wipes out all sins, and cleanses the powers of the body and subdues involuntarily the lusts of the flesh; it lessens melancholy, and (banishes) all madness; it breaks down anger, it expels hell’s angels, and gets rid of the devils; it dispels the darkness of the understanding, and increases holiness; it preserves the health, and completes good works, and it lights up a spiritual fire in the heart, i.e., the love of God (in place of) the love of man, and it (promotes) peace between the body and the soul.

Cecil Francis Alexander

Cecil Francis Humphreys Alexander

Cecil Francis Alexander (1818–1895) wrote the hymn based on this poem in 1889 at the request of Hercules Henry Dickinson, Dean of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle. Dickinson gives this account:

“I wrote to her suggesting that she should fill a gap in our Irish Church Hymnal by giving us a metrical version of St. Patrick’s ‘Lorica’ and I sent her a carefully collated copy of the best prose translations of it. Within a week she sent me that exquisitely beautiful as well as faithful version which appears in the appendix to our Church Hymnal.”

She was the daughter of Major John Humphreys, Miltown House, co. Tyrone, Ireland, In 1850 she married the Rt. Rev. W. Alexander, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. She wrote 400 hymns, of which the best known are “All things bright and beautiful,” “Once in royal David’s city,” and “There is a green hill far away.”

And here is the complete hymn:

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
By power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river;
His death on cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour;
The service of the seraphim;
Confessors’ faith, apostles’ word,
The patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls;
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star-lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, his might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need;
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, his shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation;
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Charles V StanfordCharles Villiers Stanford

The music to the hymn was originally set in 1902 by Charles Villiers Stanford for chorus and organ, using two traditional Irish tunes, ST. PATRICK and GARTAN, which Stanford took from his own edition (1895) of George Petrie’s Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (originally 1855).  In many churches, it is unique among standard hymns because the variations in key, length and meter of verses mean that at least three different tunes must be used.

The choir of Trinity College, University of Melbourne sings the Lorica. Here is an arrangement by Melville Cook.

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Anthems

Jesus and Samaritan woman Rembrandt

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria, Rembrandt

Both of today’s anthems deal with the theme of living water that Jesus offer to the Samaritan woman at the well. The choir will sing a capella a simple arrangement of I heard the voice of Jesus say.

I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, by Horatius Bonar

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Come unto me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down
thy head upon my breast’:
I came to Jesus as I was,
weary and worn and sad;
I found in him a resting-place,
and he has made me glad.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Behold, I freely give
the living water, thirsty one;
stoop down and drink and live’:
I came to Jesus, and I drank
of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
and now I live in him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘I am this dark world’s light;
look unto me, thy morn shall rise,
and all thy day be bright’:
I looked to Jesus, and I found
in him my star, my sun;
and in that light of life I’ll walk
till travelling days are done.

 

Horatius Bonar

Horatius Bonar

The text is by Horatius Bonar (1808-1889). To say that Horatius Bonar had a family history of serving in the Church of Scotland would be an understatement. With Nearly 364 years of service in the church, it was no question what would become of Horatius at some point in his life. Horatius was born December 19th, 1808 to James Bonar who was at the time the Solicitor of Excise in Scotland. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Horatius stayed in his hometown and studied at the local High School and the University where, in 1837, he was ordained in the church, and became an assistant to Rev. John Lewis, Minister of St. James’s, Leith, Scotland. In November of that same year, Bonar left St. James and became Minister of North Perish, Kelso, Scotland. In 1843, because of a “great disruption,” in the church, Bonar left the his position at North Perish and joined the Free Church of Scotland. In 1853, the University of Aberdeen conferred upon Bonar the Doctorate of Divinity, which eventually would lead him back to Edinburgh in 1866, when he was placed at Chalmers Memorial Church, The Grange, Edinburgh. This was Bonar’s last call, but in 1883, he was chosen to be the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. He was well known for being a poet.

Bonar preached the Substitutionary Sacrifice:

“If Christ is not the substitute, he is nothing to the sinner. If he did not die as the sin-bearer, he has died in vain. Let us not be deceived on this point nor misled by those who, when they announce Christ as the deliverer, think they have preached the gospel. If I throw a rope to a drowning man, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more than that? If I cast myself into the sea and risk myself to save another, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more? Did He risk His life? The very essence of Christ’s deliverance is the substitution of himself for us–his life for ours! He did not come to risk his life; he came to die! He did not redeem us by a little loss, a little sacrifice, a little labor, a little suffering: ‘He redeemed us to God by His blood’ (I Peter 1:18,19). He gave all he had, even his life, for us. This is the kind of deliverance that awakens the happy song, ‘To Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood’ (Revelation 1:5).”

His poems and his life were marked by sadness: Five of his children died young. But later, his widowed daughter and her five children had to move in with him. Many grandparents would groan at the added burden, but Bonar rejoiced. To him it was as if God had given him five children to replace those he had lost.

____________________

Ralph Vaughn Willaims

Ralph Vaughn Williams 

The tune KINGSFOLD is an old English folk song. The tune is written in e minor, but also can be considered a modal tune. The tune was published in English Country Songs (1893), an anthology compiled by Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland. It wasn’t until Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958) heard this folk song in Kingsfold, Sussex, England, that the tune was actually named. After Vaughn Williams had heard the tune, he decided  to arrange the tune for the text of “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” for the  English Hymnal (1906).

Its unusual use of the minor key ads poignancy to this haunting hymn tune. In teh thrid verse, the penitent soul responds to Jesus’ invitation and drinks “of that life-giving stream,” so that “my thirst was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in Him.”

Here I heard the voice of Jesus say is sung at service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey on Sunday to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe, 10th Mary 2015. Here it is sung by a youthful choir faster tempo.

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Sicut cervus, by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

Palestrina

Palestrina

Psalm 42: 1-3

Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum:
ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus.
Sitivit anima mea ad Deum fortem vivum:
quando veniam et apparebo ante faciem Dei?
Fuerunt mihi lacrimae meae panes die ac nocte,
dum dicitur mihi quotidie: Ubi est Deus tuus?

As a hart longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me continually, “Where is your God?”

Sicut cervus is likely the best known of Palestrina’s motets.It has the beauty and dignity for which Palestrina’s music is known and judged to be the ideal of Renaissance counterpoint. The motet’s polyphonic flow and gentle melodic arches contain a quiet drama. While the motet’s word-painting is not overt, neither is it hidden. There is a deep feel for the words’ meaning as the  voices begin quietly in imitation for the words Sicut cervus (As the hart). At the word desiderat (longs), rhythm quickens and the line rises to its peak at the word: fontes (streams); as the words seek their object, so the melodic lines seek their goal.  As the text’s thought turns toward the self with the words ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus (Thus longs my soul for Thee, God), shorter motives in closer imitation and intensifying dissonance patterns express the human soul’s fervent desire and bring the motet to its conclusion.

Here it is sung by the Westminster Cathedral Choir. And here at Somerville College, Oxford.

 

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Mount Calvary Music, March 12, 2017

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Mount Calvary int aisle

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Lent II

March 12, 2017

Hymns

O wondrous type! O vision fair

Be Thou my vision

‘Tis good, Lord, to be here

Anthems

Call to remembrance, by Richard Farrant

Hide not Thy face, by Richard Farrant

____________________

 

Transfiguration Fra Angelico

O wondrous type! O vision fair is a translation of Cælestis formam gloriæ partly by John Mason Neale and partly by the editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Moses and Elijah are key persons in Jesus’ mission. Gospel writers mention Moses thirty-seven times and Elijah twenty-seven times. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Abraham tells the Rich Man, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:31). Before his Passion, Jesus went to the top of a mountain to converse with Moses and Elijah. There Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” (Matthew 17:2), with Peter, James, and John as witnesses. Shortly after this event, Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51) to battle Satan and death. The martial tune DEO GRACIAS (AGINCOURT) therefore fits this text. By His victory, he has become the One “who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” when we rise from the dead.

O wondrous type! O vision fair
Of glory that the Church may share,
Which Christ upon the mountain shows,
Where brighter than the sun He glows!

With Moses and Elijah nigh
The incarnate Lord holds converse high;
And from the cloud the Holy One
Bears record to the only Son.

With shining face and bright array,
Christ deigns to manifest today
What glory shall be theirs above
Who joy in God with perfect love.

And faithful hearts are raised on high
By this great vision’s mystery;
For which in joyful strains we raise
The voice of prayer, the hymn of praise.

O Father, with the eternal Son
And Holy Spirit, ever One,
Vouchsafe to bring us by Thy grace
To see Thy glory face to face. Amen.

Sarum breviary

Cælestis formam gloriæ is from the Sarum beviary of 1495.

Cælestis formam gloriæ,
quam spes quærit Ecclesiæ,
in monte Christus indicat,
qui supra solem emicat.

Res memoranda sæculis:
tribus coram discipulis,
cum Elia, cum Moyse
grata promit eloquia.

Assistunt testes gratiæ,
legis vatumque veterum;
de nube testimonium
sonat Patris ad Filium.

Glorificata facie
Christus declarat hodie
quis honor sit credentium
Deo pie fruentium.

Visionis mysterium
corda levat fidelium,
unde sollemni gaudio
clamat nostra devotio:

Pater, cum Unigenito
et Spiritu Paraclito
unus, nobis hanc gloriam
largire per præsentiam.

Here is the plainchant version of the hymn.

Neale’s Translation:

A type of those bright rays on high
For which the Church hopes longingly
Christ on the holy mountain shows,
Where brighter than the Sun He glows.

Tale for all ages to declare:
For with the three disciples there,
Where Moses and Elias meet,
The Lord holds converse, high and sweet.

The chosen witnesses stand nigh,
Of Grace, the Law, and Prophecy:
And from the cloud the Holy One
Bears record to the Only Son.

With face more bright than noontide ray
Christ deigns to manifest to-day
What glory shall be theirs above,
Who joy in God with perfect love.

And faithful hearts are raised on high
By this great vision’s mystery,
For which, in yearly course, we raise
The voice of prayer, and hymn of praise.

Thou, Father, Thou, Eternal Son,
Thou Holy Spirit, Three in One,
To this same Glory bring us nigh,
That we may see Thee eye to eye.

Here is a great performance of the Agincourt carol. Here is Dunstable’s version on the organ at Caen. Here is a duet – do not miss the comments. And one in honor of St. George’s Day.

____________________

Be thou my vision14th C. Manuscript MG 3, National Library of Ireland

containing “Rob tu mo bhoile”

The Irish monk Eohaid Forgaill (530-598) was a Latin scholar and “King of the Poets.” He was said to have spent so much time studying that he went blind, and was give the name Dallán, “Little Blind One.”   He wrote the poem, “Rop tú mo Baile” (“Be Thou my Vision”) asking God to be his vision But “vision” here means more than physical sight. The original Irish word “baile” mean “vision” or “rapture,” in the sense used by the Old Testament prophets.

This was translated into literal prose by Irish scholar Mary Byrne (1880-1931), a Dublin native, and then published in Eriú, the journal of the School of Irish Learning, in 1905. Eleanor Hull (1860-1935b), born in Manchester, was the founder of the Irish Text Society and president of the Irish Literary Society of London. Hull versified the text and it was published in her Poem Book of the Gael (1912).

Irish liturgy and ritual scholar Helen Phelan, a lecturer at the University of Limerick, points out how the language of this hymn is drawn from traditional Irish culture: “One of the essential characteristics of the text is the use of ‘heroic’ imagery to describe God. This was very typical of medieval Irish poetry, which cast God as the ‘chieftain’ or ‘High King’ (Ard Ri) who provided protection to his people or clan. The lorica (Latin: breastplate) is one of the most popular forms of this kind of protection prayer and is very prevalent in texts of this period.” St. Patrick’s Breastplate (1940 The Hymnal, #268) is in this genre.

Hull’s verse version was paired with the Irish tune SLANE in The Irish Church Hymnal in 1919. The folk melody was taken from a non-liturgical source, Patrick Weston Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs: A Collection of 842 Airs and Songs hitherto unpublished (1909).

“Most ‘traditional’ Irish religious songs are non-liturgical,” says Dr. Phelan. “There is a longstanding practice of ‘editorial weddings’ in Irish liturgical music, where traditional tunes were wedded to more liturgically appropriate texts. This is a very good example of this practice.”

Back in 433 AD, on the eve of Bealtine, a Druidic Holiday that lines up directly with Easter as well as the spring equinox, it was declared by the King, Leoghaire (Leary) Mac Neill, that no fires were to be lit until the fire atop of Tara Hill was lit. Going against the kings wishes, St. Patrick went out to Slane Hill and lit a candle to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. The king was so impressed by the courage that St. Patrick had shown, Leoghaire let him continue his missionary work throughout Ireland. The tune was given the name SLANE to commemorate this event.

English translation by Mary Byrne, 1905:

Be thou my vision O Lord of my heart
None other is aught but the King of the seven heavens.

Be thou my meditation by day and night.
May it be thou that I behold even in my sleep.

Be thou my speech, be thou my understanding.
Be thou with me, be I with thee

Be thou my father, be I thy son.
Mayst thou be mine, may I be thine.

Be thou my battle-shield, be thou my sword.
Be thou my dignity, be thou my delight.

Be thou my shelter, be thou my stronghold.
Mayst thou raise me up to the company of the angels.

Be thou every good to my body and soul.
Be thou my kingdom in heaven and on earth.

Be thou solely chief love of my heart.
Let there be none other, O high King of Heaven.

Till I am able to pass into thy hands,
My treasure, my beloved through the greatness of thy love

Be thou alone my noble and wondrous estate.
I seek not men nor lifeless wealth.

Be thou the constant guardian of every possession and every life.
For our corrupt desires are dead at the mere sight of thee.

Thy love in my soul and in my heart —
Grant this to me, O King of the seven heavens.

O King of the seven heavens grant me this —
Thy love to be in my heart and in my soul.

With the King of all, with him after victory won by piety,
May I be in the kingdom of heaven O brightness of the son.

Beloved Father, hear, hear my lamentations.
Timely is the cry of woe of this miserable wretch.

O heart of my heart, whatever befall me,
O ruler of all, be thou my vision.

Here is the hymnal version. Verse three is usually omitted.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tow’r:
Raise Thou me heav’nward, O Pow’r of my pow’r.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’n’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whate’er befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Although there are hundreds of versions of Be Thou my vision on the Internet, all the vocals ones are not very satisfactory.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Here is King’s College, Cambridge. Here it is arranged as an art song. Here sung in Modern Irish.

Here is a charming version for violin and harp. A good arrangement for cello and piano. Of course for Celtic instruments. For string quartet. For brass quintet! For marching band!!

___________________

Joseph Armitage Robinson

‘Tis good Lord to be here was written by Joseph Armitage Robinson (1858-1933),  D.D., Dean of Westminster and of Wells, of Christ College, Camb. (B.A. 1881, M.A. 1884, D.D. 1896), sometime Fellow of his College, Norrisian Professor of Div., Camb., Rector of St. Margaret’s., Westminster, and Canon of Westminster. As Dean of Wells Robinson enjoyed close links with Downside Abbey. He also critically explored the origins of the Glastonbury legends.Robinson was a participant in the bilateral Anglican-Roman Catholic Maline Conversations.  His hymn, “‘Tis good, Lord, to be here” was written c. 1890. It was included in the 1904 edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern.

Jesus, with Peter, James and John, had to come down from the mountain.  The next story in Matthew 17 is of Jesus meeting the crowd and healing an epileptic boy; He predicts His death.  In the Liturgy, we catch of glimpse of the Uncreated Light that shone through the humanity of Jesus. It is given to strengthen us in the realities and difficulties of everyday life, where God is to be found.

‘’Tis good, Lord, to be here’, but, Lord, when we go, ‘Come with us to the plain’, be with us in the day to day realities of our life, in our relationships with others, in our family or health problems, in all the joys and sadnesses of everyday life.

‘Tis good, Lord, to be here,
thy glory fills the night;
thy face and garments, like the sun,
shine with unborrowed light.

‘Tis good, Lord, to be here,
thy beauty to behold,
where Moses and Elijah stand,
thy messengers of old.

Fulfiller of the past,
promise of things to be,
we hail thy body glorified,
and our redemption see.

Before we taste of death,
we see thy kingdom come;
we fain would hold the vision bright,
and make this hill our home.

‘Tis good, Lord, to be here,
yet we may not remain;
but since thou bidst us leave the mount,
come with us to the plain.

The tune SWABIA was composed by Johann M. Spiess (? – 1772). Spiess taught music at the Gymnasium in Heidelberg, Germany, and played the organ at St. Peter’s Church and (1746-72) at Berne Cathedral.

Transfigutaion NR

Raphael, The Transfiguration (1516-1520)

The upper part portrays the Transfiguration of Christ, flanked by Moses and Elijah, on Mount Tabor. The lower part illustrates the Healing of the Possessed Boy, which follows immediately after the Transfiguration in the Synoptic Gospels.

In the upper Transfiguration, the radiant Christ floats in the clouds above the hill, flanked by Moses and Elijah. Below them, lying dazzled and sprawled on the ground, are his disciples. The figure of the floating Jesus is both indicated and acclaimed by gestures of the crowd in the lower section, which thus unite the two halves of the work. In contrast to the brilliance of the Transfiguration, the lower picture is marked by darkness, as well as the consternation of the apostles who are unable to cure the sick boy. Meanwhile, the expressive bodily gestures and glazed, open-eyed stare of the boy, reveal the awful effects of his condition.

This painting in unique in portraying these episodes together. The name Raphael means “God heals” and Jesus manifests Himself as the one who, by His divine power, heals bodies and souls.

____________________

Anthems

Richard Farrant (1530-1580) was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal until 1564, when he was appointed organist and choirmaster to St. George’s Chapel, Windsor; this post entailed the annual presentation of a play before the queen, which led to the creation of the Children of Windsor, a boys’ theatrical company formed from members of the choir, Farrant later leased the defunct Blackfriars’ Priory and converted it into a theater.

Farrant is also one of the earliest and most well-known composers that began to mix the two mediums of music and drama. It was this uncommon mixture that allowed him to begin to develop the composition style of ‘verse.’ This becomes prominent in his pieces such as the anthems Call to remembrance and Hide not thou thy face. They are similar in many ways: they are both in the same minor key, befitting their texts that lament sin and beg for mercy. Both anthems ass color by taking advantage of the English technique of juxtaposing notes that do not belong together in Renaissance music theory (for example A and A-flat in teh key of F minor). Both set forth the text in a simple, easily understood fashion, using a homophonic texture and simple rhythms  – plainness and directness being highly desirable qualities in early Anglican liturgy. Both repeat the last section of music and text for dramatic effect. Their unadorned style is fitting for Lent and their powerful pleas for mercy and forgiveness for sin speak right to the heart.

Call to remembrance, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindness, which hath been ever of old. O remember not the sins and offences of my youth, but according to thy mercy, think thou on me, O Lord, for thy goodness.

The Tewkesbury Abbey School sings it here.

Hide not thou thy face from us, O Lord, and cast not off thy servants in thy displeasure; for we confess our sins unto thee, and hide not our unrighteousness. For thy mercy’s sake, deliver us from all our sins.

Westminster Abbey choir sings it during a service to commemorate the passing of the last British veterans of World War One.

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Entangling Alliances

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Entangling allainces

In the current overheated political atmosphere, accusations explode like bombs bursting in air.

A few things to keep in mind:

We are not at war with the Russian Federation; it is not our enemy. It is not determined to impose Russian Orthodoxy on the entire world.

Constitution, Art 3., Sec 3.: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

Russia is a rival, and is ruled by an autocrat. But Putin is a fairly mild autocrat, as Russian autocrats go; remember Ivan the Terrible and Joseph Stalin? Turkey is in NATO, and Erdogan is far more autocratic than Putin.

I see nowhere in Scripture or in the Constitution that the United States is the guarantor of world peace, and is eternally bound to defend the independence of Ukraine and the Baltic states against Russia. Or perhaps of Catalonia against Madrid?

I see nowhere in the Constitution that the president of the United States is the “Leader of the  Free World.” What on earth could that mean today? All it does is feed presidential grandiosity.

George Washington, Farewell address: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.”

Thomas Jefferson, Inaugural Address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none.”

John Adams 1821:

“And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….

[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.”

Perhaps the time has come to unwind NATO and SEATO and all the other alliances that have outlived their usefulness.

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