Rev. Matt's #AdventMusic for 2021
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Each day during the season of Advent in 2021, Rev. Matt is sharing a little bit about a piece of music for this holy and rich season, a season and a body of music that so often gets lost in the rush toward "pre-Christmas".
Day 24 - December 21: 오소서 ("Come now, O Prince of Peace")
Written for the opening worship service of an international conference on the peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula, the hymn 오소서 (Ososeo) has spread around the world. Its most common translation/paraphrase into English, "Come Now, O Prince of Peace," was penned by Marion Pope, mission personnel with The United Church of Canada, and now appears in numerous hymnals and songbooks across North America and the UK.
While the text's origins were not originally aimed at the liturgical year, the piece has become commonly associated with Advent because of its repeated pleas and petitions asking Christ to come, along with its prominent use of the messianic title "Prince of Peace" in the first verse.
Here at CUC, we have been singing different verses of 오소서 (Ososeo) / "Come Now, O Prince of Peace" as our offering presentation refrain. (Although the piece appears in 'Voices United' at #34, we have been reprinting the verses as they appear at #103 in the Presbyterian Church USA's 2013 hymnal 'Glory to God', because the latter offers a superior translation and multiple verses.)
Day 23 - December 20: "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" (Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen)
Continuing with the theme of roses in Advent, the late medieval German carol „Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen“ -- "Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming" -- sings of a "rose" coming from Jesse's lineage, alluding to the prophesy of Isaiah 11:1. In the present rendering of the text, both in English and in German, the "rose" refers to Jesus, although it is possible an earlier version of the carol may have been more Marian in its intention. "Lo, How a Rose" is one of those carols that can easily fit within either Advent or Christmas, in terms of its content.
The musical setting offered here is that of early 20th-century German organist, conductor, and composer Hugo Distler, using the harmonization from the 1st of his seven chorale variations that, together, form the backbone of his 1933 work „Die Weihnachtsgeschichte“ ("The Christmas Story"). Distler committed suicide in 1942, at age 34; it is suspected this was a result of his growing internal conflict over his forced service to the Nazi regime.
Day 22 - December 19: "There Is No Rose", as set by Philip Stopford
In the latter weeks of Advent as we hear the stories leading up to Jesus' birth from Luke and Matthew, even Protestants will focus on Mary at least a little bit (Marian devotion not being a typical feature of Protestant theology and spirituality).
The text of the carol "There Is No Rose" originates in the early 1400s in England. It is a "macaronic" text, with phrases in Latin interspersed into a text mostly in English (originally medieval/middle English, although more current verbiage and spelling is often used now) -- interweaving the Latin of the Church with the English of the common people as if interweaving spiritual and secular themes, symbolically, through the use of two languages. Note that the "virtue" of the rose/Mary in the first line is not just goodness or purity, as is often assumed, but a particular kind of power, the special healing power of a plant -- the sense of the medieval "vertu" here blends several of the word's potential meanings: the quickening power of a flower or root; the life-sustaining force within a plant; the vegetative power of nature, divine power and divine might, moral excellence and goodness. Arguably, "there is no rose of such power" would really be a better translation.
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;
Alleluia.
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space;
Res miranda. (A marvellous thing!)
By that rose we may well see
That He is God in persons three,
Pares forma. (Equal in form.)
The angels sungen the shepherds to:
Gloria in excelsis Deo:
Gaudeamus. (Let us rejoice!)
Now leave we all this worldly mirth
And follow we this joyful birth;
Transeamus. (Let us go!)
As one can imagine with a text that is some 600 years old, there are numerous settings of this carol to music by many composers across the ages. Here we share the 2015 setting for a capella choir written by Philip Stopford. Stopford (b. 1977) is a contemporary English sacred music choral composer, organist, and choir director, who has worked at such noted institutions as Truro Cathedral, Keble College Oxford, Canterbury Cathedral, Chester Cathedral, and St Anne's Cathedral Belfast. In 2016, he began a tenure at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Bronxville, NY, just outside New York City; in 2021, he chose to end his time at Christ Church in order to return to his native UK. Rev. Matt had the opportunity to sing Stopford's setting of "There Is No Rose" during his time as a member of The Anglican Singers of New London, Connecticut.
Day 21 - December 18: The Canticle of the Turning ("My Soul Cries Out with a Joyful Shout")
On the fourth Sunday of Advent tomorrow, our attention finally is brought closer to the approaching Christmas celebration. This year specifically, we will hear the story of "the Visitation" -- the scene told in the first chapter of Luke when Mary, newly pregnant even though she "knows not a man", goes to visit her older cousin Elizabeth, now six months pregnant even though she had been thought to be barren and was "getting on in years". In response to Elizabeth's greeting and affirmation of Mary, Mary begins to proclaim a bold and counter-cultural affirmation of God's transformative work in the world, a proclamation that becomes known as Mary's "song". This Song of Mary becomes one of the most often quoted and prayed texts from the New Testament, gaining pride of place as the primary song (canticle) in the daily prayer services of the Western liturgical traditions known as either Vespers or Evening Prayer / Evensong. From the first word of the song when it appears in Latin, this text is often called the "Magnificat".
Given the beauty and boldness of the text and the frequency with which it is used in Christian liturgical traditions (and not just in connection with the Advent/Christmas season), it is a text that has been set to music hundreds (if not thousands) of times across the ages, only a couple of which will be able to be featured here this year.
Today's selection, a paraphrase of the Magnificat set to a rousing contemporary arrangement of an Irish folk tune, was written by Rory Cooney (b. 1952), an accomplished composer, musician, and liturgist in the Roman Catholic tradition in the United States. Known as the "Canticle of the Turning", Cooney's setting of the Magnificat captures the raucous and radical nature of Mary's proclamation, which speaks of the upturning of all the structures of the world.
Featured at #120 in our 'More Voices' supplemental songbook, we at CUC will be singing the Canticle of the Turning as our post-sermon hymn tomorrow.