Here's a recording of some of The Atonement Academy high school students during choral music practice, singing Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus.
Even in this non-professional recording, it's evident they're doing a fine job of maintaining our patrimonial tradition of great music!
Among the many beautiful traditions of Christmastide, I think the Solemn Proclamation of the Nativity stands out. Yes, I know the some of the specific number of years in the announcement may not be scientifically accurate, but it sets the whole Mystery firmly in history. I'm sure many of you incorporate the Proclamation in your midnight celebrations, but in case there are some who haven't included it, here's the text we use at our parish. Our practice is to chant it at the beginning of the Mass, and then we process the image of the Christ Child to the creche.
The twenty-fifth day of December.
In the year five-thousand one-hundred and ninety-nine from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;
In the year two-thousand nine-hundred and fifty-seven from the flood;
In the year two-thousand and fifty-one from the birth of Abraham;
In the year one-thousand five-hundred and ten from the going forth of the people of Israel out of Egypt under Moses;
In the year one-thousand and thirty-two from the anointing of David as king;
In the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
In the one-hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
In the year seven-hundred and fifty-two from the foundation of the city of Rome;
In the forty-second year of the reign of the Emperor Octavian Augustus;
In the sixth age of the world, while the whole earth was at peace —
JESUS CHRIST,
Eternal God and the Son of the eternal Father, willing to consecrate the world by His gracious coming, having been conceived of the Holy Ghost, and the nine months of His conception being now accomplished, was born in Bethlehem of Judah of the Virgin Mary, made man.The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the flesh.
Here's a recording of it by Fr. Samuel Weber. Although the text differs slightly, if you're unfamiliar with it, it gives you an idea of the chant tone.
It seems as though Christmas carols have been playing in the stores and malls since Hallowe'en, but we're now getting close to the time when we should actually hear them in our churches. I'd like to share some Christmas texts we use at our parish, which I wrote several years ago.
This one uses the traditional first verse of "Away in a manger," but the subsequent verses make it especially appropriate for the Feast of the Holy Family
Away in a manger, no crib for his bed,
the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay,
the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.Dear Mary, his Mother, sang sweet lullabies,
as Jesus, awaking, gazed into her eyes.
The most holy Virgin, with loving caress
embraced the world’s Savior with Love’s tenderness.Good Joseph stood guarding the Mother and Child,
his soul filled with awe and his heart undefiled.
The birth of young Jesus made angels to sing,
but Joseph in silence kept watch o’er his King.What once was a stable may our hearts become;
may God’s holy fam’ly in us find a home.
With Mary and Joseph and angels above
we worship the Infant, the gift of God’s Love.Text: V.1, Traditional, vv. 2-4, Fr. Christopher G. Phillips, 1995
Music; CRADLE SONG, William James Kirkpatrick, 1838-1921
The following text is especially appropriate after Holy Communion, and is sung to the beautiful tune, "St. Botolph."
O precious Lord, once born for us
in stable small and poor;
be born again within our hearts,
and there let us adore.As once our Savior thou didst come,
both Man and God divine,
so now thou givest Flesh and Blood
'neath forms of Bread and Wine.Sweet Fruit of Virgin Mary's womb,
once hid from earthly sight,
may we thy children fruitful be,
and show the world thy Light.Now stay with us, Lord Jesus Christ,
in solemn Mystery,
that when our work on earth be done
thy glory we may see.Text: Fr. Christopher G. Phillips
Music: St. Botolph, by Gordon Slater
If you think they might be useful in your parish, please feel free to copy them, and "sing your love to God!"
As we begin this time of Late Advent, so we begin the great “O" Antiphons, which lead up to the Vigil of the Nativity. Each antiphon highlights a title for the Messiah: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Rising Sun), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations), and O Emmanuel (O God With Us), and they are taken from the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah.
The order of the antiphons isn't accidental. If we work backwards, beginning with the last title and take the first letter of each antiphon — Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia — the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, “Tomorrow, I will come.” The Lord Jesus, whose coming we have prepared for in Advent and to whom we refer in these seven Messianic titles, tells us: “Tomorrow, I will come.”
Those of us who, God willing, will soon be part of the Ordinariate and, therefore, “keepers” (or, better, “sharers”) of the Anglican Patrimony, which our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, sees as enriching the liturgical and devotional life of the whole Catholic Church, have a special gem in this crown of late Advent jewels, a gem lost to much of the Western Church with the passage of years.
Of course, most of the Catholic Church already shares our Patrimony’s gift regarding the O Antiphons in the metrical translation of these antiphons, the universally beloved: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” That translation is, in large part, the work of the famed Anglican priest, translator and hymnographer, John Mason Neale (1818-1866), to whose scholarly and literary gifts the Anglican Church owes its recovery of the great treasury of pre-Reformation Latin hymnody.
But regarding the antiphons themselves, check any of the Latin originals or Anglo-Catholic liturgical revival English translations of the venerable Sarum Use Missals and Breviaries and you may be surprised to see, in the Kalendar of these volumes, the notation O Sapientia (the first of the O Antiphons) opposite December 16 rather than December 17, which is a clear indication that in the Sarum Use, the O Antiphons began a day earlier than they did in the Roman Rite.
This is because there was an extra O Antiphon proper to the Sarum Use, which it will soon be our privilege to sing once again in full communion with the See of Rome, and which we happily share with the wider Catholic Church.
Sarum began the O Antiphons with O Sapientia on December 16th because on December 23, as the Roman Rite was completing its cycle of the O Antiphons by singing its seventh one, “O Emmanuel,” the ancestors of the Anglican Patrimony, having sung “O Emmanuel” the day before, December 22nd, were completing their O Antiphons by singing their unique eighth O Antiphon — a most fitting antiphon indeed to echo throughout the monasteries and churches of the land known then – and now again – as “Our Lady’s Dowry,” the antiphon O Virgo virginum:
O Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud? quia nec primam similem visa es, nec habere sequentem. Filiae Jerusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis.
O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? for neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? the thing which ye behold, is a divine mystery.
Actually, this antiphon never completely disappeared in the West. The Carmelite Order (O.Carm.), which had come to England from Palestine after the Crusades, enriched their own proper Rite (from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem), with elements they encountered in the English Uses, principal among these, of course, the Sarum Use. One of these treasures was the Feast, on December 18, of “The Expectation of the Child-bearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary” (In Expectatione Partus B. Mariae Virginis). In the Carmelite Rite’s Vespers for that day, the Antiphon at the Magnificat is none other than the Sarum Use’s O Virgo virginum, which the Carmelites followed with the O Antiphon that came on that day in the Roman schedule, O Adonai. Similarly, the Carmelite Rite’s Compline Office features many of the antiphons for the Nunc dimittis, the Canticle of Simeon, that appeared in the Sarum Use; most notably the late Lenten Media vitae, “In the midst of life, we are in death,” which was so beloved by Thomas Cranmer that he made sure he preserved it in the Book of Common Prayer by inserting it into the Burial Rite. But our Patrimony’s Compline antiphons are a topic for another day.
For this year’s late Advent O Antiphons, let's rediscover this precious Marian gem from our heritage, and reappropriate it on our journey home to Rome, sharing it with the wider Church. How pleased the Anglican musicologist, the Rev. G.H. Palmer and the Anglican nuns of Saint Mary’s, Wantage would be to hear this Antiphon sung again, this time by the faithful of an Anglican Ordinariate in full communion with the See of Peter, and which you can access here: O Virgin of Virgins.
I have been away on holidays for a little while. During that time I finished reading Bishop Andrew Burnham's new book on liturgy. Reading and reviewing this book it is not hard to appreciate the wonderful contributions to the wider Church which can come from the Anglican Patrimony. Here is my review of this excellent tome.
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Andrew Burnham, Heaven & Earth in Little Space: The Re-enchantment of Liturgy, Canterbury Press, Norwich, 2010
There are many books on the development of liturgy in which the discussion is principally about what is happening within one liturgical tradition while taking into account influences from other traditions. This is not one of them. What we have here is an absorbing discussion on contemporary developments in liturgy and their interplay between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.
To do this, the author Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet (Anglican), takes us back to the way in which liturgy developed in England during the Reformation and why. With all of the objectivity of the scholar that he is, and employing an engaging literary style, Burnham is able to navigate the reader through the turbulent waters of the English Reformation, the troubled waters of post Vatican II liturgy, and onward into the exciting possibilities opened up by Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus. This is a book which will appeal to both scholars and laypersons.
Critics in both the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church complain about the coarsening of much of modern liturgy, its banality, the over emphasis upon the ‘community’ at the expense of a sense of participation in the transcendent worship in the heavenly sanctuary, and its slavery to now dated 1970s experiments in ‘creative’ liturgy. Many have voted with their feet and refuse to attend liturgical celebrations, especially those that have been ‘manufactured’ to attract the people.
In subtitling his book, “The Re-enchantment of Liturgy”, Andrew Burnham signals his purpose which is no less than to sketch out newer approaches to liturgical renewal which, drawing upon the best of the Church’s liturgical treasury, may assist worshippers to engage more fully in the transforming worship of heaven. There is a pressing need, he argues, to find the way out of contemporary liturgical banality in order to rediscover “something of the mysterium tremens et fascinans” of what the sacred liturgy, at its best, can truly express. Traumatic ruptures in the liturgical tradition, as distinct from organic development, has not served the Spiritual interests and needs of the People of God.
Burnham begins his task with a scrupulously honest evaluation of what happened to the liturgy in the Church of England at the Reformation. He freely acknowledges that the traditional Anglican formularies of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (and to a greater and lesser extent the Prayer books of 1549, 1552, and 1559) seem patient of either a more Catholic interpretation or a more Protestant interpretation. The rupture in the Catholic liturgical tradition engineered by Thomas Cranmer resulted in “a maddening ambiguity at the heart of Anglican Eucharistic theology.”
The differing Anglican Eucharistic theologies have become institutionalised in the Book of Common Worship which provides a variety of Eucharistic Prayers to meet the differing theological beliefs of different congregations.
Next Burnham turns his attention to what happened in the Catholic Church following the introduction of the Novus Ordo of Paul VI, and what is happening in the Church following the promulgation of the Motu Proprio of Pope Benedict XVI, Summorum pontificum (2007). And, of course, full account is taken of Liturgicam authenticam (2001) with the resulting and soon to be published new English translation of the Mass. Questions here are raised about the Catholic Church’s relative inexperience with vernacular liturgy as compared to the 500 years experience of the Church of England which allowed a sacral vernacular language to emerge. Burnham takes seriously the possibility of how one Form of the Mass, the Ordinary Form or the Extraordinary Form, may influence the other. As an example he suggests the replacement of the Offertory Prayers in the Novus Ordo with those from the Missal of Blessed John XXIII thereby recovering in its fullest expression the true doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass for the Novus Ordo.
In his lengthy discussion of Church music Burnham displays all of the acumen of one who has authority to speak in this important area of liturgical worship. He correctly points out that hymnody has had a powerful influence on Anglican consciousness, with hymns providing a teaching modality as well as beauty in the worship of God. Much Catholic Eucharistic theology is disclosed in well known and well loved traditional Anglican hymns. The practical loss of these traditional hymns with their replacement by often very unworthy contemporary alternatives has eviscerated much of the Anglo-Catholic legacy of traditional Eucharistic understanding and worship. In many ways, what was in Anglican hymns made up for what was, from a Catholic point of view, lacking in the Service of Holy Communion in the BCP of 1662.
Burnham’s discussion on the liturgical forms of Morning and Evening Prayer, and other Offices, is carried out in its dialectical relationship between the Catholic breviaries in their various amended forms, and the forms devised by Thomas Cranmer. He carries that kind of discussion on into the contemporary revisions of the Church of England and the new Breviary now in use in the Catholic Church.
In this book Burnham does both Anglicans and Catholics a major service in explaining the ways in which Church of England liturgies changed at the Reformation, what were the factors at play which influenced the radical rupture the Eucharistic liturgy, and the importance of the ongoing process of change in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Burnham, while clearly Catholic in his understanding of liturgy, is nevertheless able to present in an objective and dispassionate way alternative views which are more widely accepted by Anglicans.
Importantly, Bishop Burnham also makes clear what is meant by the classic Anglican Patrimony which can suitably be retained and incorporated into the Catholic liturgical tradition, thereby enriching the tradition.
This book provides readers with a profound understanding of liturgical developments in both the Church of England and the Catholic Church, and the manifest shortcomings of much contemporary liturgical worship both Eucharistic and non-Eucharistic. Usefully, the book goes on to suggest ways in which liturgy may not only be renewed in the light of tradition, but also re-enchanted such that active participation in the Eucharist will enable the believer to really experiences something of the sublime reality of heaven.
In concluding with a chapter on St Mary the Virgin Mother of God, the Bishop makes the traditional Catholic link between the meeting of heaven and earth in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and the meeting of heaven and earth on our altars as bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ.
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Heaven and Earth in Little Space is published by Canterbury Press with a Foreword by Fr Aidan Nichols OP and an introduction by Fr Jonathan Baker SSC, Principal of Pusey House, Oxford and also a member of the Council of Forward in Faith. Full details of how to order it, and how to take advantage of a generous discount on the recommended price, can be found here.
TO ORDER with a 20% discount please quote code Space 2010.
UK orders please add £2.50 for P&P (orders over £50 postage free).
International orders please call for details. Offer price expires 31st Dec 2010.
Post: Send a cheque payable to Norwich Books and Music to
Norwich Books and Music, St Mary’s Works, St Mary’s Plain, Norwich NR3 3BH.
Tel: 01603 612614 Fax: 01603 624483 Email: orders@norwichbooksandmusic.co.uk
Copies of Heaven and Earth in Little Space may also be had through Amazon.com.
As promised, I am sending a little posting in response to the interest I have found by readers and contributors in Gregorian notation. So as not to re-invent the wheel, I include three links, one specifically to a Gregorian chant site and two dealing with basic tuition in reading modern music notation.
Here they are:
The last link is a little “goofy” for my taste and American (the Americans use different music terminology from us Brits – I don’t know about the Canadians). But, it is audio-visual and might help to make learning less agonising and boring. You will find it a lot easier if you have played a musical instrument and had a bit of do-re-mi tuition at school when you were little. It will come back as you work, and your progress will be that much faster.
Just a few general elements: musical notation, whether Gregorian or “modern”, is a language with its own grammar and rules of harmony. If you have never had any musical training, and you really want to make a start, it is hard and there are no short-cuts. There are various methods for learning, and each suits a particular temperament and age of the pupil.
To learn Gregorian chant, the Ward Method takes a lot of beating. It is especially suitable for children, but can be adapted for adults. The first thing is to sing a major scale and identify the two points where there are semitones. You have to identify the notes of this scale with the notes in the lines and spaces of the stave – the C and F in Gregorian notation or the G and F in modern notation are marked by clefs. This association is helped by having a piano or an electronic keyboard instrument. Begin in C major, because there are no sharps and flats. The sharps and flats come in when you sing the scale in other keys.
The next element is identifying and singing intervals, the numerical difference between two notes in the scale. You thus have the second, third, fourth, fifth (quint), sixth, seventh and the octave. The fourth, quint and octave are “pure”. The third and sixth are consonant and the second and seventh are dissonant. You won’t make much sense of what I’m writing here, so you will need to see the graphics and explanations in the sites above.
You must identify the clef in the stave. In Gregorian chant, it is usually a C or a F. In psalmody, your reciting note is generally the A, so you transpose the psalm chant and the antiphon to go with the psalm. If you don’t identify the clef, then you can’t determine where the two semitones are in the major scale.
After you have mastered the basic scale, you need to know about the eight psalm tones and their various endings. You will find all that in the link above or the introduction to the Solesmes Liber Usualis, which is in print (reproduction of the 1962 edition). All Gregorian music is in one of the eight tones. “Modern” music only has major and minor modes.
You next need to know the neumes, which are the symbols that represent groups of notes. Each neume has a Latin name, and I remember some lay brothers looking after a monastery farm who named their livestock after the Latin neume names, Podatus, Clivis, Scandicus, Porrectus, etc.
That’s just for the notes. Rhythm in Gregorian chant is very different from modern music notion with its measured time signatures and bars. The notes come in groups of two and three (triplets). The rhythm makes the chant flow.
All that is a tall order for people who are on their own. The best is to join a choir and go to the practices. There are also Gregorian chant sessions organised in different places, and that is the best way to learn. The music is the same whether the texts are in English or Latin. I strongly recommend learning to sing in Latin, and this will make it easier to sing in English when you are putting something on for your own parish.
If you have questions, I’ll try to answer them as best as possible. But, one thing is for sure – it is hard work and I can’t do the learning in your place.
On Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church (Anglican Use) in San Antonio, TX, the parish of The Anglo-Catholic contributor Fr. Christopher Phillips, will present a Duo Organ Recital followed by Solemn Evensong and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Featured are Gerre and Judith Hancock of the faculty of the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin; they will be assisted by students from The Atonement Academy. There will be reception to follow in the Pope John Paul II Library. A free-will offering will be received for the support of the parish Music Series.
ProgramOverture to “Elijah” – Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (transcribed by Best and Hancock)
A Fancy for Two to Play – Thomas Tomkins
Piece d'Orgue – J.S.Bach
Tres vitement
Gravement
Lentement
Scherzo Eugène – Gigout
Toccata and Fugue in D, Opus 59 – Max Reger
Improvisation
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in G Major – Herbert Sumsion
Preces and Responses – George Guest
Psalm 150 – Sir David Willcocks
For more information, visit the parish web site or email music@atonementonline.com.
The Wantage Plainchant Gradual of Rev. G. H. Palmer and Francis Burgess is, after a long desuetude, once again in print an available from Lulu thanks to the Church Music Association of America and the Community of St. Mary the Virgin in Wantage. The Plainchant Gradual, in two volumes, contains the whole Gregorian chant from the Graduale Romanum artfully set to English and notated with traditional neumes.
These volumes, which until recently were exceedingly rare and routinely fetched prices in the hundreds of dollars, can now be had for $19 each. The CMAA is to be commended for breathing new life into this wonderful gift of Anglican Patrimony!
This article was submitted to The Anglo-Catholic by Fr. Michael Gray of The Traditional Anglican Church, the English province of the TAC. We are thankful for this contribution to our reflections on sacred music.
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A guide to the use of hymns, a study in practical patrimony
It is too easy to take the use of hymns for granted, and to decide what is to be sung at the last moment, without serious consideration. There is a better way, which gives respect to a significant part of our patrimony! For convenience, I assume that most English parishes will (and generally should) use either English Hymnal (EH) or Ancient and Modern Revised (AMR) as the main book – in both cases not the recent revisions but their predecessors. The even older version of Ancient and Modern (“Standard Edition”) is also possible. References in this text are to those versions.
A historical survey
The Church of England has only ever had one obligatory hymn, if we define that as a metrical text in English. That is the choice of translations of ”Veni creator spiritus” in the Ordinal, an office which is not likely to be encountered in many parishes.
The Church of England allowed but never required, before and after service but not within it, metrical psalms according to the “Old Version” (Sternhold, Hopkins and others) and later the “New Version” (Tate and Brady). A few of these survive in modern hymn books, such as “All people that on earth do dwell” (EH 365) and “Have mercy Lord on me” (EH 74). In practice, both the Old and the New Versions had a slightly wider repertoire than psalms. There were metrical versions of the ten commandments, Lord's Prayer and creeds. There were even a few original compositions such as “O Lord turn not away thy face” (EH 84) and “While shepherds watched their flocks by night”(EH 30).
I would like to thank Christian Campbell and everyone at The Anglo-Catholic for their kind welcome. It seems peculiarly appropriate that I should be able to write this, my first post, on the feast of the Chair of St Peter, as much for the fact that it represents the feast of the Communion of the Churches in communion with Peter, as for the fact that it is the special day of prayer in the British Isles for those contemplating taking Pope Benedict’s offer in Anglicanorum Cœtibus, and again the patronal feast day of the principal church in the parish where I serve.
I am very touched to have been invited to contribute to such a site: after all, I am a ‘Roman’ Catholic, and a convinced one. I suppose that my presence here as an invited participant on this blog is the most tangible evidence of the extraordinary times in which we live: Pope Benedict, the ‘Pope of Christian Unity’ as he is becoming known, has simply cut the Gordian knot to present to you, those who I hope very soon to call my brothers and sisters in the faith, a chance to share the riches of your tradition with what one might call the Catholic mainstream.
My own interest in Anglicanism, though, goes back a long way: as a teenager, I was the organist in a Roman Catholic parish some four miles from my home, and so was required to walk there twice a week. The route took me past two Anglican churches, the second of which, St Martin’s, Epsom, had (and for all I know still has) a fine choral tradition. I would pause outside on my long walk listening to their choir practice, and was, frankly, envious. I longed to participate in this myself. Not long later, one Friday evening, I presented myself at the other church, St Paul’s, Nork Park, a few doors away from the house in which I grew up, during the choir practice, and was taken on as an occasional assistant organist and choir member.
My goodness, it was a steep learning curve! St Paul’s had a liturgical tradition of the three major services on a Sunday; Sung Eucharist, Sung Matins and Sung Evensong, all with organ and choir. This was made all the more impressive for the fact that St Paul’s was no major town-centre church, but an unremarkable mid-twentieth century building lost down an ordinary residential road in a suburb; as plain as you could find. And yet it managed in those first days of the late 1970s to produce a truly respectable music list, typical of its day. Not only were there the regular services, but there would be the occasional extra thing to work on, such as Maunder’s Olivet to Calvary or Stainer’s Crucifixion; there were always enough singers of sufficient talent to provide the solo parts.
At the organ, I sweated! Anglican chant was a new world to me, and I struggled with chant book, psalter, manuals, pedals and registration, trying to get the notes right in the right place and absorb not just the strange rhythms but the received manner in which the chant was to be sung; the particular pacing that everyone but me had grown up with; nice and straight through the verse, and then at the end, just as it gets all complicated, speed up through the difficult bit and then, before you have time to select a fresh registration, corner on two wheels and on to the next verse without a breath.
Then there were the Coverdale psalms. My first shock was on my first singing engagement at St Paul’s. I was duly engaged among the gentlemen to sing bass or to reinforce the tenors when required. Psalm 68, Exsurgat Deus, was on the menu, and my jaw nearly dropped off when the verse ‘Praise him in his Name, JAH!’ (pronounced like the vessel you put jam into) was bellowed into my ear by my South African neighbour. Then, on another occasion, there was ‘One deep calleth another, because of the noise of the water-pipes’ which gave me the giggles.
Another problem concerned me on the organ. Not only was the organist required to accompany the psalms, and, with contortions, manage not only his instrument but also several books with several pages to turn at the same time, but he was required to 'illustrate' the psalms too. ‘Glory be to the Father’ was fine (loud!), but what was I supposed to do with ‘I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, and like an owl that is in the desert’? An owl’s hoot, I suppose I could approximate with a good stopped diapason, but a pelican……? What noise does a pelican make, for Heaven’s sake? I nearly gave myself a hernia with ‘The words of his mouth were softer than butter, having war in his heart; his words were smoother than oil, and yet be they very swords’. I smiled to myself when required to accompany the ‘Tedium’, or the ‘Benny Die City’.