They recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread

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

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Acenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Easter III

April 15, 2018

Prelude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Johann Kaspar Ferdinand Fischer

Hymns

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

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless (ST AGNES)

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

Anthems

Surrexit pastor bonus,  Tomás Luis de Victoria

Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli, William Byrd

Postlude

Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr, Johann Gottfried Walther

Prelude

Christ lag in Todesbanden, Johann Kaspar Ferdinand Fischer

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

Hymns

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is John Mason Neale’s translation:

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

And so the hymn was sung for a thousand years.

Urban VIII, by Pietro da Cortona (1627)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Completely clear, I hope.

A helpful commentary explains:

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

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

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless (ST AGNES)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is Trinity Church singing it.

James Montgomery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the 1674 text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The original 1674 German text was written by

Johann Franck 

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

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

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

Johann Crüger

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

Anthems

Surrexit pastor bonus,  Tomás Luis de Victoria

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

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

At La Grande Chapelle.

____________________________________

Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli, William Byrd

Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr, Johann Gottfried Walther

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

Johann Gottfried Walther

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

A Roman Catholic Parish

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Thomas Sunday

Dominica in albis

Divine Mercy Sunday

April 8, 2018

Hymns

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

That Easter day with joy was bright (PUER NOBIS)

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

Anthems

Quia vidisti me, Luca Marenzio (1556-1599)

Quia vidisti me, Palestrina (1525-1594)

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Healy Willan

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HYMNS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here the Latin is sung by the Daughters of Mary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the current words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are altered slightly form Bright’s words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Anthems

Quia vidisti me, Luca Marenzio (1556-1599)

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

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

Here is the Progetto Musica.

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

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

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Regina coeli, Palestrina (1525-1594)

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

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

Here are the King’s Singers.

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A Note on Nomenclature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Quasimodo Sunday!

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

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

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

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

EASTER SUNDAY

April 1, 2018

8:00 AM Said Mass

10:00 AM Sung Mass with Festal Procession

Common

Messe pour le Samedy de Pasques, Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Hymns

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

Hail thee, festival day (SALVA FESTA DIES))

The day of resurrection (ELLACOMBE)

Jesus Christ is risen today (EASTER HYMN)

Anthems

Meine Seele hört im Sehen, G. F. Handel

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

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Common

Messe pour le Samedy de Pasques, Charpentier

Hymns

The strife is o’er, the battle done

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

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the National Cathedral.

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

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Hail thee, festival day

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is a version with brass.

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

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The day of resurrection (ELLACOMBE)

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

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

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

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

Here is the choir of Gloucester Cathedral.

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

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Jesus Christ is risen today (EASTER HYMN)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is King’s College, Cambridge.

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

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Anthems

Meine Seele hört im Sehen, G. F. Handel

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

Here is Beverly Sills. And Nuria Rial.

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

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

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

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

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

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

The Solemn Vigil of Easter

March 31, 2018

8:30 PM

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Hymns

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

Come ye faithful (GAUDEAMUS PARITER)

Anthems

Surrexit Christus, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736)

He is risen, Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)

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Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing 

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

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

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

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

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

Here is John Mason Neale’s translation:

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

And so the hymn was sung for a thousand years.

Urban VIII, by Pietro da Cortona (1627)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Completely clear, I hope.

A helpful commentary explains:

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

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

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Come ye faithful 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Anthems

Surrexit Christus, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Surrexit Christus vere de sepulchro, alleluia.

Christ is truly risen from the grave, alleluia.

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He is risen, Percy Whitlock

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

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

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

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

Crucifixion with two donors, El Greco

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

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

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Good Friday

March 30, 2018

Noon Mass of the Pre-Sanctified

Hymn

O sorrow deep!

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

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

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

Here is the melody.

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

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

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The Reproaches, Tomás Luis de Victoria

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

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

and

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

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

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

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Crucifixus, Claudio Monteverdi

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

Here is the Capella Mariana.

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

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

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Maundy Thursday

March 28, 2018

7:00 PM Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Common

Missa Pange Lingua, Josquin de Prez

Hymns

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

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

Now, my tongue, the mystery telling

Anthems

Ubi caritas, Maurice Durefle

Ave verum corpus, William Byrd

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Common

Missa Pange Lingua, Josquin de Prez

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

Hymns

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the 1674 text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The original 1674 German text was written by

Johann Franck 

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

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

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

Johann Crüger

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

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And now, O Father, mindful of Thy love

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the Choir of Marlborough College.

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

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

William Bright

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

William Henry Monk

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

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

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Now, my tongue, the mystery telling

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

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

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

Here is Pange lingua with the Gregorian melody.

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

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Anthems

Ubi caritas, Maurice Durefle

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

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

Here is the King’s College Choir.

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

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Ave verum corpus, William Byrd

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

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

William Byrd (c. 1540-1623)

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

Here are the Tallis Scholars

From the Benedictional of St. Aethelwold

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

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

Anglican Use

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Palm Sunday

March 25, 2018

8:00 AM Said Mass

10:00 AM Sung Mass with Procession of Palms

Common

Missa Aeterna Christi munera, Palestrina

Hymns

All glory, laud, and honor (ST. THEODULPH)

Ah, holy Jesus (HERZLIEBSTER JESU)

Ride on, ride on in majesty (WINCHESTER NEW)

Anthems

Erbarme dich, J. S.Bach

Pueri Hebraeorum, Tomas Luis de Victoria

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From the Sarum Ritual

“I exorcise thee, O creature of flowers and leaves, in the name of God the Father almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, and in the power of the Holy Ghost. Henceforth all power of the adversary, all the host of the devil, all the strength of the enemy, all assaults of demons, be uprooted and transplanted from this creature of flowers and leaves, that thou pursue not by subtlety the footsteps of those who hasten to the grace of God. Through Him who shall come to judge the quick and dead, and the world by fire. R. Amen.”

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Common

The Missa Aeterna Christ Munera  was written by Palestrina in 1590. iR is based on  an ancient hymn of the same name. Palestrina breaks the  tune into phrases and elaborates in points  of imitation to fit the style and text of  the different parts of the mass ordinary. The second setting of the Agnus Dei is particularly beautiful:  the texture broadens from four to five parts and teh movement closes with a prayer for peace: dona nobis pacem.

Hymns

All glory, laud, and honor

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 (1818—1866), the translator of  Honor, laus, et gloria  was the son of the Rev. Cornelius Neale. 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, 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 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, the author of the Latin poem,was born in Spain, probably Saragossa, between 750 and 760, and was of Visigothic descent. He fled Spain because of the Moorish occupation 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. 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.

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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Ah, holy Jesus

“Herzliebster Jesu” (often translated into English as Ah, Holy Jesus, sometimes as “O Dearest Jesus”) is a German hymn for Passiontide, written in 1630 by Johann Heermann, in 15 stanzas of 4 lines, first published in Devoti Musica Cordis in Breslau. As the original headline reveals, it is based on Augustine of Hippo; this means the seventh chapter of the so-called Meditationes Divi Augustini, presently ascribed to John of Fécamp.

Its tune, also called HERZLIEBSTER JESU, was written ten years later by Johann Crüger and first appeared in Crüger’s Neues vollkömmliches Gesangbuch Augsburgischer Confession. The tune has been arranged many times, including settings by J.S. Bach: one of the Neumeister Chorales for organ, BWV 1093, two movements of the St. John Passion, and three of the St. Matthew Passion. Johannes Brahms used it for one of his Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122: No. 2.[4]). Max Reger’s Passion, No. 4 from his organ pieces Sieben Stücke, Op. 145 (1915–1916), uses this melody.

The translation is by Robert Bridges. Bridges followed Heermann for the first three verses, though loosely (there is no equivalent in line 1 for ‘herzliebster’/ ‘dulcissime’ – most beloved/ most sweet). The two final verses are Bridges’s continuation of the idea: he said that ‘the weak apologetic latter half’ was ‘out of key with the pathetic grief of the beginning’.

1 Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,
that we to judge thee have in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted!
2 Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.
3 Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
the slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered.
For our atonement, while we nothing heeded,
God interceded.
4 For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,
thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation;
thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,
for my salvation.
5 Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,
I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,
think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,
not my deserving.

Here is the Washington National Cathedral choir.

Here is the German:

1 Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen,
daß man ein solch scharf Urtheil hat gesprochen?
Was ist die Schuld? In was für Missethaten
bist du gerathen?
2 Du wirst gegeißelt und mit dorn gekrönet,
ins Angesicht geschlagen und verhöhnet;
du wirst mit essig und mit gall getränket
ans Kreuz gehenket.
3 Was ist doch wohl die Urshach solcher Plagen?
Ach! meine Sünden haben dich geschlagen!
Ich, o Herr Jesu! hab dies wohl verschuldet,
was du erduldet!
4 Wie wunderbarlich ist doch diese Strafe!
Der gute Hirte leidet für die Schaafe;
die Schuld bezahlt der Herre, der Gerechte,
für seine Knechte!
5 Der Fromme stirbt, der recht und richtig wandelt;
der Böse lebt, der wider Gott mißhandelt.
Der Mensch verwirkt den Tod, und ist entgangen:
Gott wird gefangen.
6 Ich war von Fuß auf voller Schand und Sünden,
bis zu dem Scheitel war nichts Guts zu finden,
Dafür hätt ich dort in der Höllen müssen
ewiglich büßen.
7 O große Lieb! o Lieb ohn alle Maaße,
die dich gebracht auf diese Marterstraße¡
Ich lebte mit der Welt in Lust und Freuden:
und du must leiden!
8 Ach großer König, groß zu allen Zeiten,
wie kann ich gnugsam solche Treu ausbreiten?
Kein’s Menschen Herz vermag es auszudenken,
was dir zu schenken.
9 Ich kann’s mit meinen Sinnen nicht erreichen,
mit was doch dein Erbarmen zu vergleichen.
Wie kann ich dir denn deine Liebesthaten
im Werk erstatten.
10 Doch ist noch etwas, das dir angenehme:
wann ich des Fleisches Lüste dämpf und zähme;
daß sie aufs neu mein Herze nicht entzünden
mit alten Sünden.
11 Weil’s aber nicht besteht in eignen Kräften,
fest die Begierden an das Kreuz zu heften;
so gieb mir deinen Geist, der mich regiere,
zum Guten führe.
12 Alsdann so werd ich deine Huld betrachten,
aus Lieb an dich die Welt für nichtes achten.
bemühen werd ich mich, Herr, deinen Willen
stets zu erfüllen.
13 Ich werde dir zu Ehren Alles wagen,
kein Kreuz nicht achten, keine Schmach und Plagen,
Nichts von Verfolgung, nichts von Todesschmerzen
nehmen zu Herzen.
14 Dies Alles, obs für schlecht zwar ist zu schätzen,
wirst du es doch nicht gar beiseite setzen.
zu Gnaden wirst du dies von mir annehmen,
mich nicht beschämen.
15 Wann Herre Jesu, dort vor deinem Throne,
wird stehn auf meinen Haupt die Ehrenkrone:
da will ich dir, wenn Alles wird wohl klingen,
Lob und Dank singen.

Johann Heermann (1586-1627), son of Johannes Heermann, a furrier at Baudten, near Wohlau, Silesia, was born at Baudten, Oct. 11, 1585. He was the fifth but only surviving child of his parents, and during a severe illness in his childhood his mother vowed that if he recovered she would educate him for the ministry, even though she had to beg the necessary money. He passed through the schools at Wohlau; at Fraustadt (where he lived in the house of Valerius Herberger, who took a great interest in him); the St. Elizabeth gymnasium at Breslau; and the gymnasium at Brieg. At Easter, 1609, he accompanied two young noblemen (sons of Baron Wenzel von Rothkirch), to whom he had been tutor at Brieg, to the University of Strassburg; but an affection of the eyes caused him to return to Baudten in 1610. At the recommendation of Baron Wenzel he was appointed diaconus of Koben, a small town on the Oder, not far from Baudten, and entered on his duties on Ascension Day, 1611, and on St. Martin’s Day, 1611, was promoted to the pastorate there. After 1623 he suffered much from an affection of the throat, which compelled him to cease preaching in 1634, his place being supplied by assistants. In October, 1638, he retired to Lissa in Posen, and died there on Septuagesima Sunday (Feb. 17), 1647.

Much of Heermann’s manhood was spent amid the distressing scenes of the Thirty Years’ War; and by his own ill health and his domestic trials he was trained to write his beautiful hymns of “Cross and Consolation.” Between 1629 and 1634, Koben was plundered four times by the Lichtenstein dragoons and the rough hordes under Wallenstein sent into Silesia by the King of Austria in order to bring about the Counter-Reformation and restore the Roman Catholic faith and practice; while in 1616 the town was devastated by fire, and in 1631 by pestilence. In these troubled years Heermann several times lost all his moveables; once he had to keep away from Koben for seventeen weeks; twice he was nearly sabred; and once, while crossing the Oder in a frail boat loaded almost to sinking, he heard the bullets of the pursuing soldiers whistle just over his head. He bore all with courage and patience, and he and his were wonderfully preserved from death and dishonour. He was thus well grounded in the school of affliction, and in his House and Heart Music some of his finest hymns are in the section entitled “Songs of Tears. In the time of the persecution and distress of pious Christians.”

As a hymn writer Heermann ranks with the best of his century, some indeed regarding him as second only to Gerhardt. He had begun writing Latin poems about 1605, and was crowned as a poet at Brieg on Oct. 8, 1608. He marks the transition from the objective standpoint of the hymnwriters of the Reformation period to the more subjective and experimental school that followed him. His hymns are distinguished by depth and tenderness of feeling; by firm faith and confidence in face of trial; by deep love to Christ, and humble submission to the will of God. Many of them became at once popular, passed into the hymnbooks, and still hold their place among the classics of German hymnody.

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Ride on, ride on in majesty

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.

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

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.

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Anthems

Erbarme dich, J. S. Bach

Erbarme dich, mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen! Schaue hier, Herz und Auge weint vor dir bitterlich. Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears! See here, before you heart and eyes weep bitterly. Have mercy, my God.

Here are Eula Beale and Yehudi Menuhin. Here is Christa Ludwig under Otto Klemperer. And here is Kirsten Flagstad.

In the drama of the Mathaus Pssion, this aria reflects Peter’s solitary heartache in the garden after he denies knowing Jesus three times. It is set in a lilting 12/8 time, suggesting the baroque dance rhythm of the siciliano.

Aching beauty and profound sadness coexist in this music, along with a mix of other emotions which transcend description and literal meaning. The aria follows the account of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus.The Polish poet and novelist Adam Zagajewski  calls Erbarme Dich “the center and the synthesis of western music.” The violinist Yehudi Menuhin called the aria’s lamenting solo violin obligato “the most beautiful piece of music ever written for the violin.”

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Pueri Hebraeorum, Tomas Luis de Victoria

Pueri Hebraeorum vestimenta prosternebant in via et clamabant dicentes: Hosanna Filio David, benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

The Hebrew children spread their garments in the road, and cried out, saying: Hosanna to the Son of David: blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.

Tomás Luis de Victoria’s (1548-1611) Pueri Hebraorum. Victoria used motifs from Gregorian chants to construct the motet, which respects and brings out the emotional implications of the Latin text. It captures the energy and excitement of the throng of people welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem.The counterpoint indicates to us how the Jewish children grouped themselves around Him whom they wished to acclaim.  The voices enter pone at a time, a common strategy in Renaissance polyphony, here used to convey the size of the crowd,