Mount Calvary Music: August 6, 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

A Roman Catholic Church of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

The Feast of the Transfiguration

August 6, 2017

Hymns

‘Tis good, Lord, to be here

Be Thou my vision

Immortal, invisible, God only wise

Common

Missa de Angelis

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 ‘Tis good Lord to be here was written by Joseph Armitage Robinson (1858-1933), D.D., Dean of Westminster. Jesus, with Peter, James and John, had to come down from the mountain.  The next story in Matthew 17 is of Jesus meeting the crowd and healing an epileptic boy; He predicts His death.  In the Liturgy, we catch of glimpse of the Uncreated Light that shone through the humanity of Jesus. It is given to strengthen us in the realities and difficulties of everyday life, where God is to be found.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joseph Armitage Robinson

Joseph Armitage Robinson

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

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

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Be thou my vision. The Irish monk Eohaid Forgaill (530-598) was a Latin scholar and “King of the Poets.” He was said to have spent so much time studying that he went blind, and was give the name Dallán, “Little Blind One.”   He wrote the poem, “Rop tú mo Baile” (Be Thou my Vision) asking God to be his vision. But “vision” here means more than physical sight. The original Irish word “baile” mean “vision” or “rapture,” in the sense used by the Old Testament prophets. The language of this hymn is drawn from traditional Irish culture: it uses heroic imagery to describe God. This was characteristic of medieval Irish poetry, which cast God as the ‘chieftain’ or ‘High King’ (Ard Ri) who provided protection to his people or clan.

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

containing “Rob tu mo bhoile”

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

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

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

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

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

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

English translation by Mary Byrne, 1905:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Immortal, Invisible, God only wise, by William Chalmers Smith (1824—1908), is a proclamation of the transcendence of God: “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever” (1 Tim 17). No man has ever seen God, who dwells in inaccessible light that is darkness to mortal eyes. God lacks nothing (“nor wanting”) and never changes (“nor wasting”), and is undying, unlike mortals, who in a striking image “blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree, then wither and perish.” The original ending of the hymn completes the thought: “And so let Thy glory, almighty, impart, / Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.” “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known” (John 1:18). Only in Jesus through the proclamation of the Gospel can we know the Father.

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

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

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

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

The final stanzas have been somewhat altered from the original:

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

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

Here is Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis.

William Chalmers Smith color

Walter Chalmers Smith

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

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

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

 

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

John Roberts

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

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

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

Rowan Williams and Gospel Book

Rowan Williams venerating the Gospel Book of St. Augustine

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

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

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Mount Calvary Church: Music for July 30, 2017

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“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net”

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Congregation

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Trinity VII

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Celebrant

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Hymns

Sing praise to God, who reigns above

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless

Alleluia! sing to Jesus

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Sing praise to God, who reigns above is a translation by Frances Elizabeth Cox (1812—1897) of Sei Lob und Ehr’ dem höchsten Gut by Johann Jacob Schütz (1640-1690). He became a Pietist, and the hymn has the warm, affectionate tone of German Pietism.  The line “casts each false idol from its throne” recalls the first hymn’s prayer for “a heart” that is “my dear Redeemer’s throne.” The tune, Mit Freuden zart, is beloved of the American Moravians. The tune name itself – “with tender joy” – expresses something of the character of the life and music of the Moravians.

1 Sing praise to God who reigns above,
The God of all creation,
The God of power, the God of love,
The God of our salvation;
With healing balm my soul He fills,
And every faithless murmur stills:
To God all praise and glory!

2 What God’s almighty power hath made
His gracious mercy keepeth;
By morning glow or evening shade
His watchful eye ne’er sleepeth:
Within the kingdom of His might
Lo, all is just, and all is right:
To God all praise and glory!

3 The angel host, O King of kings,
Thy praise forever telling,
In earth and sky all living things
Beneath Thy shadow dwelling,
Adore the wisdom that could span,
And power which formed creation’s plan;
To God all praise and glory!

4 Thus all my gladsome way along
I sing aloud Thy praises,
That men may hear the grateful song
My voice unwearied raises:
Be joyful in the Lord, my heart:
Both soul and body bear your part:
To God all praise and glory!
5 O ye who name Christ’s holy name,

Give God all praise and glory:

Give God all praise and glory:

All ye who own His power, proclaim

Aloud the wondrous story!

Cast each false idol from its throne,

The Lord is God, and He alone:

To God all praise and glory!

Here it is sung by First Presbyterian in Houston.

Frances Cox hymns

“Frances Elizabeth Cox, daughter of Mr. George V. Cox, born at Oxford, is well known as a successful translator of hymns from the German. Her translations were published as Sacred Hymns from the German, London, Pickering. The 1st edition, pub. 1841, contained 49 translations printed with the original text, together with biographical notes on the German authors. In the 2nd edition, 1864, Hymns from the German, London, Rivingtons, the translations were increased to 56, those of 1841 being revised, and with additional notes. The 56 translations were composed of 27 from the 1st ed. (22 being omitted) and 29 which were new. The best known of her translations are “Jesus lives! no longer [thy terrors] now” ; and ”Who are these like stars appearing ?” A few other translations and original hymns have been contributed by Miss Cox to the magazines; but they have not been gathered together into a volume.” (Hymnary)

“Johann Jacob Schütz was born Sept. 7, 1640, at Frankfurt am Main. After studying at Tübingen (where he became a licentiate in civil and canon law), he began to practice as an advocate in Frankfurt, and in later years with the title of Rath. He seems to have been a man of considerable legal learning as well as of deep piety. He was an intimate friend of P. J. Spener; and it was, in great measure, at his suggestion, that Spener began his famous Collegia Pietatis. After Spener left Frankfurt, in 1686, Schütz came under the influence of J. W. Petersen; and carrying out Petersen’s principles to their logical conclusion, he became a Separatist, and ceased to attend the Lutheran services or to communicate. He died at Frankfurt, May 22, 1690 (Koch, iv. 220; Blätter fur Hymnologie, Feb. 1883).” (Hymnary)

The tune MIT FREUDEN ZART has some similarities to the French chanson “Une pastourelle gentille” (published by Pierre Attaingnant in 1529) and to GENEVAN 138. The tune was published in the Bohemian Brethren hymnal Kirchengesänge (1566) with Vetter’s text “Mit Freuden zart su dieser Fahrt.”

Here is the choir at St. David’s Cathedral singing the hymn.

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

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.

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

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

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

As we walk down the aisle to approach the Eucharist, Jesus, who has been lifted up on the Cross and to Heaven, is drawing us to Himself, fulfilling His promise in the verse painted on the sanctuary arch.

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the hymn at St. Bartholomew’s.

william-chatterton-dix

William Chatterton Dix

William Chatterton Dix (14 June 1837 – 9 September 1898) was an English writer of hymns and carols. He was born in Bristol, the son of John Dix, a local surgeon, who wrote The Life of Chatterton the poet, a book of Pen Pictures of Popular English Preachers and other works. His father gave him his middle name in honour of Thomas Chatterton, a poet about whom he had written a biography. He was educated at the Grammar School, Bristol, for a mercantile career, and became manager of a maritime insurance company in Glasgow where he spent most of his life.

At the age of 29 he was struck with a near fatal illness and consequently suffered months confined to his bed. During this time he became severely depressed. Yet it is from this period that many of his hymns date.[4][5] He died at Cheddar, Somerset, England, and was buried at his parish church. (Wikipedia)

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Mount Calvary Music July 23, 2017

in hymns, Mount Calvary Church

Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore, Maryland

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of  St Peter

Trinity VI

July 23, 2017

Hymns

Come ye faithful people, come

Let all mortal flesh keep silence

The God of Abraham praise

____________________

Opening hymn: # 137 Come, ye faithful people, come, written by Henry Alford (1810—1871) closely follows the gospel for today, the parable of the wheat and the tares.

The first stanza focuses directly on the physical harvest, an image used throughout scripture from in Genesis through Revelation. The second stanza begins Alford’s expansion of the parable. Alford applies it to how joy and sorrow grow together in life, and how God does not eliminate sorrow until after the final harvest when God “will wipe every tear from their eyes.” The third and fourth stanzas move directly to the apocalypse with “For the Lord our God shall come.”

1. Come, ye thankful people, come,
raise the song of harvest home;
all is safely gathered in,
ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide
for our wants to be supplied;
come to God’s own temple, come,
raise the song of harvest home.

2. All the world is God’s own field,
fruit as praise to God we yield;
wheat and tares together sown
are to joy or sorrow grown;
first the blade and then the ear,
then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we
wholesome grain and pure may be.

Stained Glass Window Depicting Matthew Chapter 20 Verse 8 Chesterton Church Warwickshire

3. For the Lord our God shall come,
and shall take the harvest home;
from the field shall in that day
all offenses purge away,
giving angels charge at last
in the fire the tares to cast;
but the fruitful ears to store
in the garner evermore.

4. Even so, Lord, quickly come,
bring thy final harvest home;
gather thou thy people in,
free from sorrow, free from sin,
there, forever purified,
in thy presence to abide;
come, with all thine angels, come,
raise the glorious harvest home.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Henry Alford

Alford was born in London, of a Somerset family, which had given five consecutive generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford’s early years were passed with his widowed father, who was curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was a precocious boy, and before he was ten had written several Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic outlines. After a peripatetic school course he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827 as a scholar. In 1832 he was 34th wrangler and 8th classic, and in 1834 was made fellow of Trinity.

He had already taken orders, and in 1835 began his eighteen-year tenure of the vicarage of Wymeswold in Leicestershire, from which seclusion the twice-repeated offer of a colonial bishopric failed to draw him. He was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1841-1842, and steadily built up a reputation as scholar and preacher, which might have been greater if not for his excursions into minor poetry and magazine editing.

In 1844, he joined the Cambridge Camden Society (CCS) which published a list of do’s and don’ts for church layout which they promoted as a science. He commissioned A.W.N. Pugin to restore St Mary’s church. He also was a member of the Metaphysical Society, founded in 1869 by James Knowles.

In September 1853 Alford moved to Quebec Street Chapel, Marylebone, London, where he had a large congregation. In March 1857 Lord Palmerston advanced him to the deanery of Canterbury, where, till his death, he lived the same energetic and diverse lifestyle as ever. He had been the friend of most of his eminent contemporaries, and was much beloved for his amiable character. The inscription on his tomb, chosen by himself, is Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis (“the lodging place of a traveler on his way to Jerusalem”).

Besides editing the works of John Donne, he published several volumes of his own verse, The School of the Heart (1835), The Abbot of Muchelnaye (1841), The Greek Testament, The Four Gospels (1849), and a number of hymns, the best-known of which are “Forward! be our watchword,” “Come, ye thankful people, come”, and “Ten thousand times ten thousand.” He translated the Odyssey, wrote a well-known manual of idiom, A Plea for the Queen’s English (1863), and was the first editor of the Contemporary Review (1866–1870).

The hymn tune ST. GEORGE’S WINDSOR, composed in 1856 by George J. Elvey (1816-18930, Note the use of a dotted rhythm, balanced throughout the music, as a compelling invitation to sing, notably on the opening “Come.” One might also notice the phrase “all is safely gathered in” where the pitch begins and ends on A, but feels “gathered” by the use of the neighboring tones, Bb and G. Midway through the hymn, the phrases, “first the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear,” are sung in an ascending sequence that seem almost like corn growing in the field, and later the leap upward for ‘raise the song’ and ‘raise the glorious’ helps to paint the intent of the final phrases in stanzas 1 and 4.

 

George Job Elvey

Composer and organist George Job Elvey in 1816. He was a boy chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, going on to study at the Royal College of Music. At seventeen he took his first post as an organist, serving at a few parishes until 1835, when he was appointed to serve at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, where he remained for nearly fifty years as organist and choirmaster. Several other future organists and composers were his students at St. George’s, including C.H.H. Parry.

As organist at St. George’s he also held the official post of Organist to the Queen. In this capacity he came into contact with various members of the British royal family, even teaching composition to the Queen’s consort, Prince Albert (who later wrote a few hymn tunes himself). Many of Elvey’s sacred choral works were composed for royal occasions such as weddings or funerals, and he was knighted in 1871 following his Festival March for the wedding of Princess Louise. (As a letter-writer to the Musical Times noted some years later, his knighthood came at the age of fifty-five, coincidentally LV in Roman numerals)

He was a great admirer of Handel, even naming his youngest son (born after he was sixty) George Frederick Handel Elvey. His choirs often sang Handel’s anthems and choruses, and he also conducted the oratorios at large festivals, his last being a performance of Messiah less than a year before his death in 1893.

Elvey’s own works included nearly fifty anthems, two oratorios, numerous settings of service music and Anglican chant, and, of course, several hymn tunes. His oratorio Mount Carmel was followed very soon after by Mendelssohn’s Elijah, dealing largely with the same Biblical story. Elvey acknowledged the superiority of the latter, and Mount Carmel was never published, though portions of it continued to be performed at St. George’s and elsewhere. His other oratorio, The Resurrection and Ascension, was more popular in its day, though unknown in our time.

Elvey is remembered today primarily for some of his chant settings and two very popular hymn tunes: DIADEMATA  and ST. GEORGE’S WINDSOR.

____________________

 

Offertory hymn: #197 Let all mortal flesh keep silence is a paraphrase by James Moultrie (1829—1885) of the Cherubic hymn from the Liturgy of St. James of the Eastern Church. It dates to the third century. This hymn is chanted as the bread and wine are carried to the altar. The Greek text reads: “Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and in itself consider nothing of earth; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed, and given as food to the believers; and there go before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.” Here is the hymn in the 4th Plagal. Here is the Great Entrance:

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

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

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

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

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

Gerald Moultrie was a Victorian public schoolmaster and Anglican hymnographer born on September 16, 1829, at Rugby Rectory, Warwickshire, England. He died on April 25, 1885, Southleigh, England, aged 55.

____________________

Closing hymn: One night in London, Thomas Olivers (1725—1729), a follower of John Wesley, was attracted to a service in a Jewish synagogue, where he heard a great singer, Myer Leoni, sing an ancient Hebrew text in solemn, plaintive mode. Olivers wrote a hymn to that tune: The God of Abraham Praise, which is a paraphrase of the ancient Hebrew Yigdal, or doxology. In the 12th century, Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides codified the 13 articles of the Jewish Creed. These articles of the Jewish faith were later shaped into the Yigdal around 1400 by Daniel ben Judah, a judge in Rome.

Her is the King’s College choir.

Here is a wonderful Sephardic Yigdal. Here is a (to my ear) klezmer arrangement of the Yigdal. Here is a modern arrangement of the Yigdal.

Here are the original verses. Note that in almost all hymnals the specifically Christian references have been removed, often to make the hymn suitable for interfaith gatherings.

The God of Abraham praise, who reigns enthroned above;
Ancient of everlasting days, and God of Love;
Jehovah, great I AM! by earth and Heav’n confessed;
I bow and bless the sacred Name forever blessed.

The God of Abraham praise, at Whose supreme command
From earth I rise—and seek the joys at His right hand;
I all on earth forsake, its wisdom, fame, and power;
And Him my only Portion make, my Shield and Tower.

The God of Abraham praise, whose all sufficient grace
Shall guide me all my happy days, in all my ways.
He calls a worm His friend, He calls Himself my God!
And He shall save me to the end, thro’ Jesus’ blood.

He by Himself has sworn; I on His oath depend,
I shall, on eagle wings upborne, to Heav’n ascend.
I shall behold His face; I shall His power adore,
And sing the wonders of His grace forevermore.

Tho’ nature’s strength decay, and earth and hell withstand,
To Canaan’s bounds I urge my way, at His command.
The wat’ry deep I pass, with Jesus in my view;
And thro’ the howling wilderness my way pursue.

The goodly land I see, with peace and plenty bless’d;
A land of sacred liberty, and endless rest.
There milk and honey flow, and oil and wine abound,
And trees of life forever grow with mercy crowned.

There dwells the Lord our King, the Lord our righteousness,
Triumphant o’er the world and sin, the Prince of peace;
On Sion’s sacred height His kingdom still maintains,
And glorious with His saints in light forever reigns.

He keeps His own secure, He guards them by His side,
Arrays in garments, white and pure, His spotless bride:
With streams of sacred bliss, with groves of living joys—
With all the fruits of Paradise, He still supplies.

Before the great Three-One they all exulting stand;
And tell the wonders He hath done, through all their land:
The list’ning spheres attend, and swell the growing fame;
And sing, in songs which never end, the wondrous Name.

The God Who reigns on high the great archangels sing,
And “Holy, holy, holy!” cry, “Almighty King!
Who was, and is, the same, and evermore shall be:
Jehovah—Father—great I AM, we worship Thee!”

Before the Savior’s face the ransomed nations bow;
O’erwhelmed at His almighty grace, forever new:
He shows His prints of love—they kindle to a flame!
And sound thro’ all the worlds above the slaughtered Lamb.

The whole triumphant host give thanks to God on high;
“Hail, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” they ever cry.
Hail, Abraham’s God, and mine! (I join the heav’nly lays,)
All might and majesty are Thine, and endless praise.

Here is the 1940 Hymnal version by an English choir.

Here is the Yigdal:

  1. Exalted be the Living God and praised, He exists – unbounded by time is His existence;
  2. He is One – and there is no unity like His Oneness – Inscrutable and infinite is His Oneness;
  3. He has no semblance of a body nor is He corporeal – nor has His holiness any comparison;
  4. He preceded every being that was created – the First, and nothing precedes His precedence;
  5. Behold! He is Master of the universe – Every creature demonstrates His greatness and His sovereignty;
  6. He granted His flow of prophecy – to His treasured, splendid people;
  7. In Israel, none like Moses arose again – a prophet who perceived His vision clearly;
  8. God gave His people a Torah of truth – by means of His prophet, the most trusted of His household;
  9. God will never amend nor exchange His law – for any other one, for all eternity;
  10. He scrutinizes and knows our hiddenmost secrets – He perceives a matter’s outcome at its inception;
  11. He recompenses man with kindness according to his deed – He places evil on the wicked according to his wickedness;
  12. By the End of Days He will send our Messiah – to redeem those longing for His final salvation;
  13. God will revive the dead in His abundant kindness – Blessed forever is His praised Name.

Note that the last verse expresses belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is an article of Jewish belief, as is clear from  Gospels.

Thomas Olivers

Thomas Olivers was born in 1725 in the Welsh village of Tregynon in Montgomeryshire. Both his father and his mother died when he was four years old. He grew up to be an apprentice shoemaker and he became a profligate and reckless young man.] After his involvement in a scandal which forced him to leave his home, Olivers travelled to Bristol where he heard George Whitfield preach on the text “is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” (Zechariah 3:2). Olivers was converted and stated a desire to follow Whitfield however one of Whitfield’s preachers discouraged him and instead he joined the Methodist society and met one of the founders of Methodism, John Wesley there.

After joining Wesley as a preacher, Olivers was initially stationed to preach in Cornwall.  He was later stationed to preach all around Great Britain and Ireland because of his fearless preaching style. He also had good relations with Great Britain’s Jewish community, attending Jewish synagogues and became friends with Rabbi Myer Lyon ] In 1775, Wesley appointed Olivers to co-write the Arminian Magazine with him. Olivers often exercised control over the content of the magazine. Due to a lack of formal education, Olivers’ editorial of the magazine contained several printing errors, which annoyed Wesley but he persevered with Olivers whom he counted as a friend and attached a list of errors at the back of the yearly annual in 1778. However following an “astounding number of errata”, Wesley declared in a letter that “I cannot, dare not, will not suffer Thomas Olivers to murder the Arminian Magazine any longer. The errata are intolerable and innumerable. They shall be so no more” and removed Olivers from his position in 1789. Despite this, Olivers and Wesley remained good friends, often viewed as a father-son relationship. When Olivers died in March 1799, he was buried in Wesley’s grave in London.

(Thanks to Wiki and Conjubilant)

Digression on Wheat and Tares

This sense of the word tare survives only in the title of this parable. The etymology is: Middle English tare (“vetch”), from Old English *taru, from Proto-Germanic *tarwō (compare Dutch tarwe (“wheat”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dr̥Hu̯ā (compare Welsh drewg (“darnel”), Lithuanian dirvà (“field”), Ancient Greek δάρατος (dáratos, “bread”), Sanskrit दूर्वा (dūrvā, “panic grass, millet”)).

Here is a comparison and wheat and tares. It is hard at one stage to distinguish them.

Mount Calvary Music: July 2, 2017

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from The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck, 1432

Mount Calvary Church

of the Roman Catholic 

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

July 2, 2017

Hymns

O for a thousand tongues to sing was written by Charles Wesley (17007—1788) on the first anniversary of his conversion. In May 1738, he was suffering severely from pleurisy while he and his brother were studying under the Moravian scholar Peter Boehler in London. At the time, Wesley was plagued by extreme doubts about his faith. Taken to bed with the sickness, on May 21 Wesley was attended by a group of Christians who offered him testimony and basic care, and he was deeply affected by this. He read from his Bible and found himself deeply affected by the words, and at peace with God. Shortly his strength began to return. He wrote of this experience in his journal, and counted it as a renewal of his faith. Charles composed this hymn in 1739. Because of the benefactions that God has made us in creating, redeeming, and sanctifying us, our overwhelming desire should be to praise God in word and deed in gratitude for what He has done to the end that all may know of His great deeds.

And yet, we also sing in the knowledge that the Kingdom of God is not yet fully realized. We proclaim Christ’s victory as a declaration of hope that we will see Christ reign over all. We stand with the voiceless, the lame, the prisoner, and the sorrowing, and lift our song of expectation.

Here is a rousing version at Coral Ridge Presbyterian.

Humbly I adore Thee is a translation and adaptation of part of the Adoro te devote, which was composed by Thomas Aquinas (1225—1274) as a private prayer of devotion. Aquinas addresses Jesus in the sacrament as Truth, “Verity unseen.” For Aquinas, truth was the conforming of the mind to reality. The reality of the Eucharist is that Jesus is present beneath the outward signs of bread and wine.  We believe this because Jesus has said it: “This is my Body.” The sacrament is a memorial in the fullest sense of the word: through the Mass the One Sacrifice of Calvary becomes truly present to us. We now see Jesus veiled, but our deepest desire is to see Him face to face. In that vision of God-become-Man for love of us, we are fully conformed to that truth and blessed because we attain the purpose for which we were created.

Here is St. John’s, Detroit.

Now thank we all our God was written by Martin Rinkart (1586—1649) was a minister in the city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years War. Even apart from battles, lives were lost in great number during this war because illnesses and disease spread quickly throughout impoverished cities. In the Epidemic of 1637, Rinkart officiated at over four thousand funerals, sometimes fifty per day. In the midst of these horrors, it is difficult to imagine maintaining faith and praising God, and yet, that is what Rinkart did. He found the faith to write the hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God,” which was originally meant to be a prayer said before meals. Rinkart could recognize that our God is faithful, and even when the world looks bleak, He is “bounteous” and is full of blessings, if only we look for them. Blessings as seemingly small as a dinner meal, or as large as the end of a brutal war and unnecessary bloodshed are all reasons to lift up our thanks to God, with our hearts, our hands, and our voices.

Here is Nun danket alle Gott, by the Dresdner Kreuzchor. It is at the Semperoper, where I heard the opera that moved me most deeply: Friedenstag.

 

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Mount Calvary Music: June 25, 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

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

Baltimore, Maryland

Pentecost III

June 25, 2017

Hymns

A mighty fortress is our God

At the name of Jesus

All creatures of our God and King

__________________________________ 

A might fortress is our God. Martin Luther in 1529 wrote this paraphrase of Psalm 46. Luther was intensely aware of spiritual warfare and this hymn emphasizes that out struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers of darkness, who cannot be conquered by human might, but only by the power of the incarnate Word of God. Our our translation was done in 1852 by

Frederick Henry Hedge (1805-1890)

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hedge was the son of Harvard University professor of logic and metaphysics Levi Hedge. At the age of 12, he traveled to Germany and studied music for five years under the care of George Bancroft. After graduating from Harvard in 1825 as valedictorian, he enrolled in Harvard Divinity School, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson. After graduating from the Divinity School in 1828, Hedge was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1829, and became minister at a Unitarian church in West Cambridge. In 1835 he took charge of a church in Bangor, Maine; in 1850, after spending a year in Europe, he became pastor of the Westminster Church in Providence, Rhode Island, and in 1856 of the church in Brookline, Massachusetts.

He was central to the development of Transcendentalism in the 1830s. On September 8, 1836, Hedge met with Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Putnam (1807-1878), and George Ripley in Cambridge to discuss the formation of a new club. Eleven days later, Ripley hosted their first official meeting at his house on September 18, 1836; the group would eventually be known as the Transcendental Club. Its first official meeting was attended by Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, and Convers Francis as well as Hedge, Emerson, and Ripley. Future members would include Henry David Thoreau, William Henry Channing, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Sylvester Judd, and Jones Very. The group planned its meetings for times when Hedge was visiting from Bangor, Maine, leading to the early nickname “Hedge’s Club”. Hedge wrote: “There was no club in the strict sense… only occasional meetings of like-minded men and women”, earning the nickname “the brotherhood of the ‘Like-Minded'”. He became alienated from the group’s more extreme positions in the 1840s and did not publish in the Transcendental journal The Dial, despite his friendship with its editor Margaret Fuller, saying he did not want to be associated with the movement in print.

In 1858, Hedge returned to Harvard Divinity School as a professor of ecclesiastical history; that year, he also became editor of the Christian Examiner, a role he held for three years. The next year, Hedge began a four-year term as president of the American Unitarian Association.  In 1872, he resigned his pastorship in Brookline to become professor of German literature at Harvard. He retained this position until 1881. Deeply read in philosophy, ecclesiastical history, and German literature, he ranked as perhaps the foremost German literary scholar in the United States.

Although his theology was radically different from Luther’s, he did nor recast Luther’s hymn but was a faithful and excellent translator.

Here is a delicate rendition by the Capella Fidiciana of Leipzig,

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At the name of Jesus. The name of a person is his reputation. In the Trinity, each person seeks to honor the other: the Father seeks to honor the Son by communicating to the Son the incommunicable Divine Name, Lord, Kyrios. We who are sinners name Him our Savior, because He has born our human nature beyond the highest heaven to the very throne of God.

The words are by Caroline Maria Noel (1817-1877). Miss Noel was the daughter of the Hon. Gerard T. Noel, and niece of the Hon. Baptist W. Noel. She was born in London, April 10th. 1817 and died at 39 Cumberland Place, Hyde Park, Dec. 7th. 1877. Her first hymn “Draw nigh unto my soul”, (Indwelling) was written when she was 17. During the next three years she wrote about a dozen pieces. From 20 years of age to 40 she wrote nothing; and during the next 20 years the rest of her pieces were written. The first edition of her composition was published as “The Name of Jesus and other Verses for the Sick and Lonely” in 1861. This was enlarged from time to time and subsequently changed by the publishers to “The Name of Jesus and other Poems”. The 1878 edition contains 78 pieces. Miss Noel, in common with Miss Charlotte Elliott, was a great sufferer, and many of these verses were the outcome of her days of pain. They are specially adapted “for the sick and lonely” and were written rather for private meditation than for public use, although several are suited for the latter purpose. Her best known hymn is the “Processional for Ascension Day, At the Name of Jesus”. It is in the enlarged edition of “The Name of Jesus, etc. 1870” page 59 and is dated 1870 by the family. (Dr. Julian’s Hymnography)

King’s Weston

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ melody, Kings’s Weston, flows reverently in its somewhat somber manner. It has strong appeal, not least because it features a lovely, mournful folklike quality in the Dorian mode. Thus, while the music is perfectly fitting for a religious hymn, its dual expressive manner gives it an unusual dimension.

Here is the Cardiff Festival Choir.

______________________

All creatures of our God and King is based upon the Canticle of Brother Sun by St. Francis of Assisi (1182—1226). It was written in stages during the final year of his life, while he was nearly blind. Francis wrote: “For His praise, I wish to compose a new hymn about the Lord’s creatures, of which we make daily use, without which we cannot live.”  We and all creation exist to honor and praise God. We praise God even for bodily death, because it is through the gates of death that we return home to Him and enter the New Creation.

The text is a paraphrased translation by

William Henry Draper (1855-1933),

Draper was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire on 19 December 1855, the fifth son of Henry and Lucy Mary Draper. He attended Cheltenham College, and went up to Keble College, Oxford as an exhibitioner. He was ordained in 1880. He was then Curate of St Mary’s, Shrewsbury, and became successively Vicar of Alfreton in 1883 and Vicar of the Abbey Church, Shrewsbury in 1889. In 1899, he became Rector of Adel Church, Leeds, a position he retained for twenty-one years. During the First World War, he also acted as deputy for the Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds, who was absent on war service. In 1918, Draper was appointed as a member of the council for the revision of the Anglican communion service.

In 1919, he became Master of the Temple in London. In 1930, contending that he had spent too long in one place, he left the Temple to become Vicar of Weare, retiring in 1933 shortly before his death.

Throughout his career, he contributed hymns to periodicals such as The Guardian and the Church Monthly. He also wrote a book of Poems of the Love of England, a biography of Sir Nathan Bodington, a survey of the University extension movement in 1923, and A Picture of Religion in England in 1927. He also developed a scheme for the establishment of church lectures in the universities.

The tune is Lasst Uns Erfreuen (Vigiles et Sancti), from the Jesuit hymnal Auserlesene Katholische Geistliche Kirchengesänge, adapted by Peter von Brachel, Cologne, 1623. It borrows elements of the earlier tune Genevan 68 (1539) by Mattaus Greitter (c. 1494-1550).

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Here is John Rutter’s arrangement.

 

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On the Road to Civil War?

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Gunman who shot US congressman was Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who asked victims: “Are you Democrat or Republican?”

American political rhetoric has always been overheated. It led to one civil war; will it led to another?

John Wilkes Booth thought that Lincoln would use his troops and his negroes to establish a dictatorship in the post-Civil War United States. After he shot Lincoln, he shouted Sic semper tyrannis – thus always to tyrants.

 

The Democrats have been loudly accusing Trump of being incompetent —and of being a budding tyrant and tool of Vladimir Putin. The accusations are contradictory, but logic has never had much influence in politics.

One Bernie Sanders supporter has taken the rhetoric with deadly seriousness:

The man identified by authorities as the shooter at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday was a Bernie Sanders volunteer who signed a petition to impeach President Donald Trump, his social media posts show.  James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old from Belleville, Illinois, is suspected of shooting five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, during a Republican lawmakers team practice for an upcoming game against Democrats. He later died after being shot by police, President Donald Trump confirmed.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalese R. Louisiana

The 66-year-old Illinois man who opened fire early Wednesday on members of Congress practicing for a charity baseball game, raged against President Trump and once singled out House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was wounded in the attack.

A neighbor, Noah Nathan, was out walking his dogs when the shooting started. He dropped to the ground and pulled out his phone to video a left-winger trying to kill Republican congressman precisely and only because they were Republican. Here is the video

Hodgkinson apparently posted repeatedly about politics on Facebook, most recently slamming Trump and calling for him to be removed from office.

“Trump is Guilty & Should Go to Prison for Treason,” read one post that shared a video calling for Trump’s impeachment. Another said: “Trump is a mean, disgusting person.”

Kathy Griffin thought it was hilarious to tweet a picture of herself holding  the blood-stained head of a beheaded Donald Trump.

New York is hosting a play in which Trump stands in for Julius Caesar and is assassinated.

Some Trump haters – how many? – have decided if they can’t win elections they will kill the Republicans who do win elections.

If Trump is assassinated or even impeached, his supporters will think that the Left will not honor the results of elections, so why try to win by peaceable means. Which side do you think the majority of police and military would be on if it comes down to a violent confrontation between right and left?

This miscalculation caused the Left in Spain to provoke and then lose a civil war.

 

Mount Calvary Music: Corpus Christi 2017

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Corpus Christi 

Mount Calvary Church

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

Baltimore, Maryland

Prelude: Le banquet céleste, Olivier Messiaen

Hymns

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness.

O food to pilgrims given

Father, we thank thee who hast planted

Anthems

Caro mea vere est cibus, by Francisco Guerrero

O sacrum convivium, by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

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

Common

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

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Hymns

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

Catherine Winkworth

in her Lyra Germanica (1854).

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
leave the gloomy haunts of sadness;
come into the daylight’s splendour,
there with joy thy praises render
unto him whose grace unbounded
hath this wondrous banquet founded:
high o’er all the heavens he reigneth,
yet to dwell with thee he deigneth.
Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
light, who dost my soul enlighten,
joy, the sweetest heart e’er knoweth,
fount, whence all my being floweth,
at thy feet I cry, my Maker,
let me be a fit partaker
of this blessed food from heaven,
for our good, thy glory, given.
Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
let me gladly here obey thee;
never to my hurt invited,
be thy love with love requited:
from this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
through the gifts thou here dost give me,
as thy guest in heaven receive me.

Here is the 1674 text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The erotic imagery in the German was eliminated by Catherine Winkworth.

The original 1674 German text was written by

 

Johann Franck 

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

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

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

Johann Crüger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450 – 1517)

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

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

A Digression on Contrafacta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Anthems

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

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

(Here sung in the Sistine Chapel)

by

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)

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

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

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

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

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

Jan_Pietersz._Sweelinck_LACMA_M.88.91.370

 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)

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

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

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Communion Service

 by

Harold Darke (1888-1976)

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

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

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Mount Calvary Music, Trinity Sunday 2017

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The Trinity, by St. Andrei Rublev

Mount Calvary Church

Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Trinity Sunday 2017

Rigaudon – Andre Campra (1660-1744)

Hymns

Come, thou almighty King

Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty

Anthems

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

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

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

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HYMNS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reginald Heber , D.D. (1783—1826),

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

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

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

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ANTHEMS 

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

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

Sung at St. Paul’s Cathedral

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

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

Benedicta sit by

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

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

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

Sung by Kiwis

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Mount Calvary Music: Pentecost 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Pentecost

June 4, 2017

Hymns

Hail thee, festival day!

Father, we thank Thee who hast planted

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest

Anthems

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, Eric Spengler

Factus est repente, Eric Spengler

Common

An Anglican Folk Mass, Martin Shaw

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

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

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

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

___________________

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

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

F. Bland Tucker

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

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

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

__________________

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

___________________

Anthems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

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An Anglican Folk Mass, Martin Shaw

Here is the Creed as sung at Chichester Cathedral.

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

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

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

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The Sun Dance and the Son of God

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

Inequality has become a leitmotif of contemporary politics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many think the spiral represents the search for the Center Place

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

Anglos were horrified by this ritual and banned it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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Sister Cathy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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Mount Calvary Music, May 7, 2017: Easter IV

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From the Catacombs of Priscilla

Mount Calvary Church

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Fourth Sunday of Easter

The Good Shepherd

May 7, 2017

Hymns

The King of Love my shepherd is

Be joyful, Mary, heavenly Queen

I know that my Redeemer lives

Anthems

Psalm 23, Herbert Howells

Ego sum resurrectione, Hans Leo Hassler

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Willan

Credo, Missa de Angelis

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

Here is a Reformed analysis of the hymn:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry Williams Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_____________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Latin original is somewhat different:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is Praetorius’s setting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel Medley

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

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

Here is King of Glory Lutheran Church singing it.

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

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Anthems

Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, Herbert Howells

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

Herbert Howells

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

Michael’s grave at Twigworth

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

Here is the Imperial College Chamber Choir singing Psalm 23.

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Ego sum resurrectio, Hans Leo Hassler

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

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

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

Hans Leo Hassler

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

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

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

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Mount Calvary Music: April 30, 2017

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The disciples recognized Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread

Mount Calvary Church

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Third Sunday of Easter

Emmaus

April 30, 2017

Organ Prelude: Angelus Domini, Vasurto

Hymns

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing

Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness

Anthems

Venite, comedite by William Byrd

Alleluia! Cognoverunt discipuli by William Byrd

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Willan

Credo, Missa de Angelis

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

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Hymns

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

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

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

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

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

Here is John Mason Neale’s translation:

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

And so the hymn was sung for a thousand years.

Urban VIII, by Pietro da Cortona (1627)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A helpful commentary explains:

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

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

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

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

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

James Montgomery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Our closing hymn is the Eucharistic hymn, Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness. The original German text, Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, was written by the German politician and poet Johann Franck (1618-1677) and expresses an intimate relationship between the individual believer and his faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ. Much devotional poetry that conveys an internalized piety was written in the period immediately following the devastation of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). It was translated by Catherine Winkworth in her Lyra Germanica.

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
leave the gloomy haunts of sadness;
come into the daylight’s splendour,
there with joy thy praises render
unto him whose grace unbounded
hath this wondrous banquet founded:
high o’er all the heavens he reigneth,
yet to dwell with thee he deigneth.
Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
light, who dost my soul enlighten,
joy, the sweetest heart e’er knoweth,
fount, whence all my being floweth,
at thy feet I cry, my Maker,
let me be a fit partaker
of this blessed food from heaven,
for our good, thy glory, given.
Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
let me gladly here obey thee;
never to my hurt invited,
be thy love with love requited:
from this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
through the gifts thou here dost give me,
as thy guest in heaven receive me.

Here is the 1674 text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The erotic imagery in the German was eliminated by Catherine Winkworth.

Johann Franck 

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

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

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

Johann Crüger

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

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

____________________________

 Anthems

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Byrd

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

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

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

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Mount Calvary Music: Thomas Sunday 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Thomas Sunday

April 16, 2017

Hymns

O sons and daughters, let us sing

That Easter day with joy was bright

Christ the Lord is risen today

Anthems

Quia vidisti me

Regina Coeli, Palestrina

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdelena, Willan

_____________________________

 

Opening hymn: O sons and daughters is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) of the hymn O filii et filiae by the Franciscan Jean Tisserand (died 1494). It recounts the appearance of the Risen Christ to both the women on Easter and to the disciples in the upper room. We are addressed in the stanza How blest are they who have not seen / And yet whose faith has constant been, / For they eternal life shall win. Although we have not seen the Risen Lord with our bodily eyes, we see Him with the eyes of faith, especially in the Eucharist, and are loyal to Him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here the Latin is sung by the Daughters of Mary.

____________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the version from the 1982 Hymnal at St. Bartholomew’s. Here is a version for brass and organ. It seems to be favored by hand bell ringers.

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

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

______________________

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the Latin original and a translation.

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

Here are Benedictines singing the Gregorian sequence.

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

According to Sundry Thoughts,

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

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

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

 

_____________________________

Anthems

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

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

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

Here are the King’s Singers.

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

After mass during Eastertide we will be singing the Gregorian version

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Mount Calvary Music, Palm Sunday 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

Baltimore

Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Palm Sunday

April 9, 2017

Hymns

All glory, laud, and honor

O sacred head, sore wounded

Ride on, ride on in majesty

Anthems

Pueri hebraeprum, Tomás Luis de Victoria

Ode I, Triodion, Arvo Pärt

Common

Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Missa Brevis, Palestrina

____________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

John Mason Neale in cassock

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

His window in St. Swithuns, East Grinstead

This is the original:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her is the Gregorian setting of the Latin..

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

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

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

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

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

The first stanza of the German text is

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

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

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Dürer, c. 1509

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Latin text on which the hymn is based is:

Salve mundi salutare, Ad faciem:

Salve, caput cruentatum,

totum spinis coronatum,

conquassatum, vulneratum,

arundine verberatum,

facie sputis illita.

salve, cujus dulcis vultus,

immutatus et incultus,

immutavit suum florem,

totus versus in pallorem

quem […] coeli curia.

 

Omnis vigor atque viror

hinc recessit, non admiror,

mors apparet in aspectu

totus pendens in defectu,

attritus aegra macie.

sic affectus, sic despectus,

propter me sic interfectus,

peccatori tam indigno

cum amoris intersigno

appare clara facie.

 

In hac tua passione,

me agnosce, pastor bone,

cujus sumpsi mel ex ore,

haustum lactis cum dulcore,

prae omnibus deliciis.

non me reum asperneris,

nec indignum dedigneris,

morte tibi jam vicina,

tuum caput hic inclina,

in meis pausa brachiis.

 

Tuae sanctae passioni

me gauderem interponi,

in hac cruce tecum mori:

praesta crucis amatori,

sub cruce tua moriar.

morti tuae tam amarae

grates ago, Jesu chare;

qui es clemens, pie Deus,

fac quod petit tuus reus,

ut absque te non finiar.

 

Dum me mori est necesse,

noli mihi tunc deesse;

in tremenda mortis hora

veni, Jesu, absque mora,

tuere me et libera.

cum me jubes emigrare,

Jesu chare, tunc appare:

o amator amplectende,

temetipsum tunc ostende

in cruce salutifera.

Here is a translation of the Latin:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry Hart Milman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arvo Pärt

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

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

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

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

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