Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, in vanum laborant qui aedificaverunt eam - "Unless the Lord built the house, they worked in vain who built it" Ps. 127
This is a very different musical interpretation of Psalm 51 than we saw last week in Allegri's Miserere. In Allegri's composition the intensity of the soaring, unaccompanied voices leads us to contemplation of the Divine Mercy of God in Heaven. Here the urgent, dramatic orchestration pulls us down into King David's turbulent emotions as he comes to acknowledge his sinfulness and his need for God's mercy. This clip is only the first part of a much longer composition, and contains only the first line of the Psalm: Miserere mei, Domine, secundam misericordiam tuam, "Have mercy on me, Lord, according to your compassion". As the focus of the Psalm moves from David's sinfulness to the abundance of God's mercy, the music in the later parts of the piece changes with it . . .
[click HERE for the rest of the post and the video of Pergolesi's Miserere on Spes in Domino]
"The Prophet Nathan Rebukes King David" by Eugène Siberdt
I absolutely love J.S. Bach’s Joy-filled celebration of Jesus Christ’s love for humanity, “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”. Ash Wednesday is just two days away, so this is my last opportunity to get it in as a Music Monday selection before Lent . . .
Merry Christmas!This is the Eleventh Day of Christmas, with still more Christmas to come.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1868
Today I’d like to take a look at a particularly moving Christmas song. There's a story behind the creation of every song, and sometimes knowing the story can make the song all the more meaningful. This is one of my favorites.
The story begins on Christmas Day, 1863, when the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem called “Christmas Bells”.
Wadsworth starts his poem with church bells ringing out the joy of Christmas:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, and wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry, Charles, Ernest, and Frances Longfellow
The poet, however, was not filled with unmixed good cheer. His wife had recently died a tragic death in a house fire, and he had just received news that his son Charles, who had left without his knowledge or consent to fight in the bitter Civil War that was then embroiling the United States, had been wounded in battle. Longfellow, himself struggling with sorrow in the midst of our most festive season, juxtaposes the joyful ringing of bells in “The belfries of all Christendom” with the manifest lack of peace among men:
Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
These images of war and shattered homes seem to give the lie to the joyful promise of the Christmas Bells:
And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said; "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Christ did not come, of course, simply to bring joy: he came to free us from the power of sin. Our Faith is grounded in Christian Hope, which is the confidence that the Power of God is greater than the power of hate, and stronger than hate's master. Longfellow's closing stanza resolves the conflict between Christmas joy and the sin and violence of this world with a ringing assertion of Christian Hope:
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men."
"My Friend, The Enemy" by Mort Kunstler
Longfellow, who had very powerful incentives to turn to despair, instead created a poem that shows us that the joy of Christmas is not a denial of the brokenness of this world, but God's answer to it. Longfellow’s poem has been put to music numerous times over the past century and a half (usually under the title, “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day”); my favorite is Johnny Cash’s rendition. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a good video of Cash performing the song, so the clip below will have to do (good recording, no video). One curious note: all the musical adaptations that I have found have left out Longfellow’s 4th and 5th stanzas, with their references to thundering cannon and forlorn households. The version below also moves stanza 3 (“Till ringing, singing . . .”) behind Longfellow’s concluding stanza (“God is not dead . . .”), and then repeats the “God is not dead” stanza. The effect is to de-emphasize the reasons for the speaker’s cry of despair, and give greater emphasis to the redemptive conclusion. It seems to me that the change robs the song of some of it’s narrative coherence (why should the speaker “bow his head in despair” after hearing "peace on earth, good will to men"?), and, by replacing those concrete examples of suffering with the abstraction "hate", deprive it of much of its dramatic power. I suppose the song-makers thought those images too heavy for a Christmas song, but in fact they are a stark reminder of why the coming of the Messiah is "Good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2:10). For all that, the sense of Longfellow’s poem still comes through in the song: the joyful celebration of Christmas seems to be mocked by the all-too-evident evil in the world (and is there any one of us who is not, right now, directly aware of some reason for anger or sorrow?). The conclusion reminds us that the Child lying in the wooden manger will one day hang upon a wooden cross, precisely so that he might carry us through those evils to the feet of His Father. When we learn about the real suffering that the author of those words was experiencing as he wrote them, we can experience the song, not as sentimentality or empty platitude, but as a true triumph of Christian Hope. Let the bells peal loud and deep!
The beautiful hymn "Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming" (originally the 16th century German song "Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen") is one of my favorite songs of the Advent Season. It draws its inspiration from the following Messianic passage from the Prophet Isaiah:
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. (Isaiah 11:1-2)
In Isaiah’s time the Davidic kingdom had been destroyed, and the people of Israel were living in exile. Nonetheless, it was clear to the Jewish people that the Prophet was speaking not only of their return to their earthly homeland and the rebirth a truncated political entity: he was delivering God’s promise that, when things looked most hopeless in this world, He would send a Savior, his Messiah, to usher in a Kingdom greater that any conceived by mere men. In this song the “shoot” (the Messiah Jesus, descended through his human mother Mary from King David, Jesse’s son) is depicted as a lovely Rose, a small but vibrant manifestation of God’s presence where all seemed dead:
It came, a flow'ret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.
In the Season of Advent the Church reminds us that God has also promised to send his Messiah again in glory at the end of time. This past year has given Catholic Christians plenty of reasons to feel that our world is collapsing, and that we are living in a sort of internal exile (we need not go into specific details here). Our Hope will not be realized in this world, but only in the New Jerusalem in the world to come.
For this reason, we look to the Blessed Mother as our model, who staked her life on trusting in the promise of an angel. And so the song invites us to join her in gazing on the Rose springing from the stump of Jesse:
Today is Pentecost, one of the great Feasts of the Church, in which we remember how Jesus sent the Holy Spirit upon his Disciples to guide them in their mission of Evangelization and in the governance of his Church. In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read that the Apostles, Mary and others were gathered in the Upper Room when there was a rush of mighty wind and tongues of flame. Not only that, those gathered began speaking “in other tongues”. The international crowd gathered in Jerusalem, on hearing them, was
. . . amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphyia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." (Acts 2:5-11)
Referring to this event, St. Gregory of Agrigentum said:
Therefore if somebody should say to one of us, “You have received the Holy Spirit, why do you not speak in tongues?” his reply should be, “I do indeed speak in the tongues of all men, because I belong to the body of Christ, that is, the Church, and she speaks all languages. What else did the presence of the Holy Spirit indicate at Pentecost, except that God’s Church was to speak in the language of every people?”
The Church speaks to everyone because Christ is for everyone, and his language is universal. Today we have ways of reaching people all over the globe that St. Gregory Agrigentum could not have imagined back in the 6th century, but it's the same Gospel, the same proclamation that the Apostles made 2,000 years ago.
This coming week we will begin the penitential season of Lent, during which we will not recite or sing the Gloria at Mass. I thought it would be appropriate to post one last joyful snippet on this last Sunday before our Lenten journey begins on Ash Wednesday. Vivaldi is known to have composed at least three different settings for the Gloria, from one of which the "Laudamus Te" below is taken. Aside from the curious impression that the two sopranos are singing from behind prison bars, this is a beautiful rendition.
Today, January 28th, is the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas
When I posted a clip of St.Thomas Aquinas’ well-known hymn Pange Lingua previously [here], I remarked on his ability to express theological truths in poetic form. Today we have another example in the hymn Panis Angelicus, which is familiar even to secular audiences in 19th century composer Cesar Franck’s lovely musical setting. In the clip below Franck's version is beautifully sung by a young Franciscan known as Friar Alessandro, upon whom God has apparently bestowed, as he did on his spiritual father St. Francis, the gift of song.
St. Thomas wrote Panis Angelicus as part of an entire liturgical cycle (both Mass and Divine Office) for the feast of Corpus Christi (literally, “Body of Christ”, today formally known as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ). Pange Lingua was part of this same cycle. As is appropriate for a celebration of the Lord’s gift of His own Body, Panis Angelicus (literally, “Bread of Angels”) is a meditation on the Incarnation and the Eucharist. It is also appropriate for the Feast of the Nativity, in which we celebrate the moment when the Word became Flesh, and for that reason we hear it most often during the Christmas Season.
Today is the 9th Day of Christmas, and the Memorial of two Doctors of the Church, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen. It is also the first day of the Christmas Season that is not a Solemnity, but don’t let that get you down: I’ve included a rousing version of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” below. After that, for those who are interested, is a selection of a few of my favorite posts from 2016 - who knows? You might find something interesting. Oh, and have a Happy New Year!
Below are a "baker's dozen" of posts from last year, both from this blog and my original blog, Principium et Finis. Hope you like them, and stick with us in 2017!
8 Feb - Some people get very upset when an ad hawking tortilla chips implies that unborn babies might be, you know, human: “Life Sells Chips (or, Chips Sell Life)” PF
29 Feb - Whoever said the age of miracle is over hasn’t been paying attention to the news: “Seen Any Miracles Lately?” PF
10 April - The Franciscan Nun who founded EWTN and long-time sports broadcaster Joe Garagiola both died in the same week; they may have more in common than you realize: “Mother Angelica & Brother Joe” ND
1 May - There be Dragons everywhere you look - just ask St. George, Michael Voris, and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: “Fighting Dragons, Inside and Out” ND
May God Bless You with a Very Merry Christmas! . . . and may you enjoy this beautiful rendition of the traditional Christmas song "The First Noel", sung by the University of Utah Singers. Christus Natus Est, Alleluiah!
Altarpiece of the Birth of Christ by Duccio di Buoninsegna
An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published November 24th, 2014. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.
While we're on the topic of neglected composers, how about poor Antonio Salieri? Had he not been cruelly libeled by Peter Shaffer in the play & film Amadeus, it is quite possible that his music would not be performed at all (incidentally, Shaffer's cartoonish depiction did few favors to the memory of Mozart either, who was the purported protagonist of his story). The truth is that although Mozart had some suspicions about Salieri when he first arrived in Vienna, the two eventually developed a friendly and respectful professional relationship. Salieri, in fact, responded very favorably to Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, and in his final letter Mozart mentions taking Salieri to a musical performance in his own carriage. Needless to say, Salieri did not murder Mozart (nor anyone else that we know of).
The lovely piece below is the "Sanctus & Benedictus" from Salieri's Requiem Mass, one of his four Masses. It reminds us of a time when great composers were expected to employ some portion their God-given talent to the praise and worship of that generous Creator. It is, I think, also a good example of why his contemporaries considered him a gifted composer.
Child Jesus with John The Baptist by Bartolome Murillo
The liturgical calendar normally commemorates a saint on the date of his or her death, which is the date on which that particular saint joined God in Heaven. There are only two birthdays that we celebrate other than that of Jesus himself at Christmas: the Nativity of Mary on September 8th, and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. The Blessed Mother of course was conceived without sin, and her birth meant that the Ark of the New Covenant, who would carry the Eternal Word Himself in her womb, was now present in the world.
John is held to have been cleansed of the stain of original sin in the womb, and was born under miraculous circumstances. Also, he had a very important role to play before his death, as the Forerunner and Herald of the Messiah. He took up this office which even before his birth, when he leapt in his mother's womb (Luke 1:41) at the approach of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus.
The Motet below was composed by Orlando di Lasso in 1604. It's title, Joannes est nomen eius ("his name is John"), comes from Luke's Gospel. Here, John father Zechariah had been visited by an angel, who told him that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son, who would be named John. Zechariah reacted with disbelief, since his wife was beyond the age of child-bearing, and had always been sterile. Because of his lack of faith he was struck dumb, bur regained his voice in the following way:
Now the time came for Elizabeth to be delivered, and she gave birth to a son. And her neighbors and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they would have named him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said, "Not so; he shall be called John." And they said to her, "None of your kindred is called by this name." And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he would have him called. And he asked for a writing tablet, and wrote, "His name is John." And they all marveled. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. (Luke 1:57-64)
