Hymn Tune Introit: 17th Sunday OT

This is a “placeholder” for this coming Sunday’s Entrance Antiphon. I hope to be able to make changes to it before publishing the complete Hymn Tune Introit project. It is not everything I would wish it to be. Although the first two lines are well done, I think, the last line is extremely weak, with two unnatural expressions for the sake of rhyme and meter. The important Biblical expression “his people” is missing. 

I think it’s ok for the moment (for all for whom making the switch to propers a priority is). At least, it’s closer to the proper than most hymns, although All People That on Earth Do Dwell would not be a bad choice, would it? As usual, it is in iambic Long Meter (8.8.8.8.)–with the usual conventional exceptions to the stresses that are allowed in hymn writing.

Perhaps I can think of a better solution, though, before Sunday. If so, I’ll post it here and above.

God is in his holy place,
God who unites those who dwell in his house;
he himself gives might and strength to his people.  

The Lord is in His holy place, 
Uniting all who dwell inside. 
He, He Himself gives might and strength 
To all who with Him will abide.

Hymn to St. Anne: Nocti succedit lucifer

With her Feast fast approaching, I thought I would re-post my translation of this very fine Office hymn to St. Anne. Please feel free to sing it at Mass, Vespers, etc.

The morning star is on the rise
And soon the dawn will fill the skies,
Foretelling of the coming Sun
Whose light will shine on everyone.

The Sun of justice, Christ, true Light,
And Mary, grace’s dawning bright,
And Anna, reddening the sky,
Have caused the night of Law to fly.

O mother Anna, fruitful root,
From you came your salvation’s shoot,
For you brought forth the flow’ring rod
That bore for us the Christ of God.

Christ’s mother’s mother, by the grace
Your daughter’s birth brought to our race,
And by her merits and her prayer
May we her favors come to share.

O Jesus, Virgin-born, to You
All glory is forever due.
To Father and the Spirit, praise
Be sung through everlasting days.

Colloquium Keynote Lecture in the International Catholic Press

In his address to the Colloquium on Wednesday, June 27, Monsignor Andrew Wadsworth criticized a number of liturgical and musical choices made by the organizers of the closing liturgy of this year’s Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. His criticisms have been widely noted in the religious press.
In case anyone is wondering whether his criticisms are justly due, the video of the Mass is below. Much as I hesitate to criticize any liturgy whose homily concludes with quite a nice quotation from my great patron St. Ephrem, and whose ars celebrandi is in several important ways commendable, it seems to me that in terms of musical and choreographic sensibility, a stronger contrast could not be made between this celebration of the Mass and those liturgies in Cameroon and Angola which the Holy Father complimented some years ago in this way (my emphasis):

[I was] moved by the spirit of meditative absorption in liturgy, the powerful sense of the sacred; in the liturgies there was no self-presentation of groups, no self-animation, but the presence of the sacred, of God Himself; even the movements were always movements of respect and awareness of the divine presence.

May I draw your attention particularly to 1:54:20, 2:06:06, and 2:57:20

A Feast for the Eyes

Upon entering the Cathedral of the Madeleine on the Saturday before the Colloquium, my first impression was: Color! This impression continued throughout the week, and formed an integral whole with the variety and beauty of the tonal palette of the week’s sublime liturgies. Of all the liturgical arts that combine to make the Colloquium such a lovely annual respite, it is this aspect of color, relatively scarce in the churches of my own area, which I miss most fondly these days. The stained glass windows and murals, whose Scriptural and hagiographic references are quite easily “read,” are certainly the most significant aspect of the painting. And yet it is the lavishness of the non-referential decorations that I find even more attractive, in this as in European churches. Here is a column, let us paint it! And why not?
Beauty, like truth and goodness, quite ably reflects God, Who Is. Beauty shows that God is admirable, and walking into a beautifully appointed church is like walking into a representation of heaven. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” it says, in the most appealing way.

“Two Poets for the Synod”

As previously mentioned here, the working document for October’s Synod for the New Evangelization does not mention music or singing–not once. While a paragraph of the document is reserved for beauty, as Dr. William Mahrt has pointed out, the beauty of the Western  liturgical tradition is not mentioned. 
This oversight ought to be of serious concern, not only to professional Church musicians, but to all whose lives of faith have been in any way supported by the liturgical arts.
In today’s L’Osservatore Romano, theologian Fr. Robert Imbelli of Boston College argues for the language, indeed the poetry, needed for new evangelization:

In the last chapter of his book, aptly titled “Conversions,” [Charles] Taylor offers some suggestions regarding the challenge facing the Church in a secular age that correspond to the passages from the “Instrumentum Laboris” I quoted above. He sees the need for a fresh, more creative language capable of communicating the Gospel. A language that is more affective and poetic than the prevailing prose of a one-dimensional technology. A language that taps the aesthetic dimension of experience, whether through music, art or literature
.
Taylor cites, as examples of the ability to craft a more integral and evocative language, two great Catholic poets: the English priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the French layman, Charles Péguy. Hopkins rekindled a sacramental sense of a world “charged with the grandeur of God.” Péguy conveyed poetically a living sense of the communion of all the saints, uniting earth with heaven.

These exemplars can provide inspiration for the Synod’s challenge to appropriate the Gospel anew and to spur the renewal of a Christ-centered imagination, capable of guiding and sustaining Christians in the multi-faceted labors of the new evangelization.