To end off the year, Thomas Tallis’ arrangement of the plainchant hymn that ends the office of Compline every night.
Te lucis ante terminum,
Rerum creator, poscimus
Ut solita clementia
Sis praesul ad custodiam.
Procul recedant somnia
Et noctium phantasmata;
Hostemque nostrum comprime,
Ne polluantur corpora.
Praesta, Pater omnipotens,
Per Jesum Christum Dominum,
Qui tecum in perpetuum
Regnat cum Sancto Spiritu.
Amen.
The hymn is one of the strongest reminders of my summer’s travels. Some recordings seem to pull the rug out from under my feet, plunging me back into that back-row pew in St John Cantius in Chicago, where I was nearly a whole church away from the chanting canons, but somehow still impossibly close in our sharing the Divine Office. Or into the Benedictine monks’ oratory, knowing for once that here, Compline at 7.30 really meant the close of day, and feeling deeply the profound synchronisation of natural time and civil time, so long now distorted by the ubiquitous use of artificial light.
This passage (St Augustine’s Confessions, 10.27) has been translated so many times over the centuries that I figure it is impossible for me to do any better, or to avoid unintentional plagiarism. Just to point out how beautifully symmetrical constructed the last section is, balancing God’s action with Augustine’s, and how free-flowing the style is in Latin, which is something very difficult to reproduce in English punctuation.
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam … vocasti et clamasti et rupisti surditatem meam: coruscasti, splenduisti et fugasti caecitatem meam: fragrasti, et duxi spiritum, et anhelo tibi, gustavi et esurio et sitio, tetigisti me, et exarsi in pacem tuam.
Late have I loved you, beauty ever ancient and ever new, late have I loved you! Behold, you were within and I without, yet there I sought you … You called, and cried out, and ruptured my deafness: You shone and dazzled and chased away my blindness. You sent forth sweet fragrance–I drew breath, and pant after You. I tasted, and hunger and thirst; You touched me, and I burned after Your peace.
One of the most unintentionally funniest passages I had the privilege of reading last semester. From George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.
… Maggie bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness. A woman’s arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the timeworn marble of a headless trunk. Maggie’s was such an arm as that, and it had the warm tints of life.
I love how the refrain launches into this beautifully lush harmony of fourths and fifths, and suddenly there’s a kind of resolution as the high voices go up and the air clears out. It’s the kind of sound that you can’t help but listen to because it’s so fascinating. It’s very easy for me to get stuck in only hearing the Renaissance/Classical/Romantic kinds of harmonies, just because they’re easier to find and easier on the ear. A lot of contemporary choral composition I can’t appreciate either, but this is one of those that I guess I can. It’s funny how the refrain reminds me of organum too–everything becomes cool again when it’s old enough, I guess.
I was reminded of the Rorate Caeli hymn on Tuesday–the Old Testament reading for the day begins, “Console my people, console them,” where the Lord is telling his prophet Isaiah to declare the return of the Lord:
Here is the Lord coming with power,
his arm subduing all things to him.
The prize of his victory is with him,
his trophies all go before him.
He is like a shepherd feeding his flock,
gathering lambs in his arms,
holding them against his breast
and leading to their rest the mother ewes.
The Rorate hymn is both the Israelites’ response to this–an acknowledgement of their great sin and a cry of repentance–and, in its last stanza, the Lord’s crying out to them in order that they might have hope for His eventual return. Probably one of my favourite texts. I remember once when I sang it to a friend, reading the translations after every stanza, stanzas one through three made her face fall–quite rightly because they are quite sorrowful indeed. But such sorrow, I think, even in our lives, allows us to really apprehend the mercy of God, who came, humbled in the form of a child, even while we were sinners, in order to illumine our dark night.
Latin
English
Roráte caéli désuper,
et núbes plúant jústum.
Drop down ye heavens, from above,
and let the skies pour down righteousness:
Ne irascáris Dómine, ne ultra memíneris iniquitátis: ecce cívitas Sáncti fácta est desérta: Síon desérta fácta est: Jerúsalem desoláta est: dómus sanctificatiónis túæ et glóriæ túæ, ubi laudavérunt te pátres nóstri.
Be not wroth very sore, O Lord,
neither remember iniquity for ever:
the holy cities are a wilderness,
Sion is a wilderness,
Jerusalem a desolation:
our holy and our beautiful house,
where our fathers praised thee.
Peccávimus, et fácti súmus tamquam immúndus nos, et cecídimus quasi fólium univérsi: et iniquitátes nóstræ quasi véntus abstulérunt nos: abscondísti faciem túam a nóbis, et allisísti nos in mánu iniquitátis nóstræ.
We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing,
and we all do fade as a leaf:
and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away;
thou hast hid thy face from us:
and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
Víde Dómine afflictiónem pópuli túi, et mítte quem missúrus es: emítte Agnum dominatórem térræ, de Pétra desérti ad móntem fíliæ Síon: ut áuferat ípse júgum captivitátis nóstræ.
Behold, O Lord, the affliction of thy people,
and send forth Him who is to come;
send forth the Lamb, the ruler of the earth,
from Petra of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Sion:
that He may take away the yoke of our captivity.
Consolámini, consolámini, pópule méus: cito véniet sálus túa: quare mæróre consúmeris, quia innovávit te dólor? Salvábo te, nóli timére, égo enim sum Dóminus Déus túus, Sánctus Israël, Redémptor túus.
Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,
my salvation shall not tarry:
why wilt thou waste away in sadness?
why hath sorrow seized thee?
Fear not, for I will save thee:
for I am the Lord thy God,
the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.
the lexical form 