This was a lot of work, and I thank you- wonderful selections and very helpful to have the backstory, so to speak, for the various chants. Thank you again!
Thanks very much for this! Love your commentary too. Have you read the commentary about Deis Irae by Huysmans in En Route? He emphasizes the helpless terror that will be felt by all sinners on judgement day. That is certainly what I get from this magnificent song.
No, I'm not familiar with that Huysmans passage! If you can conveniently find it and paste it in here, I think others would be interested too! Or leave a link.
As the first chords crashed on the organ Durtal recognized the "Dies iræ," that despairing hymn of the Middle Ages; instinctively he bowed his head and listened.
This was no more as in the "De Profundis" an humble supplication, a suffering which believes it has been heard, and discerns a path of light to guide it in the darkness, no longer the prayer which has hope enough not to tremble; it was the cry of absolute desolation and of terror.
And, indeed, the wrath divine breathed tempestuously through these stanzas. They seemed addressed less to the God of mercy, to the Son who listens to prayer, than to the inflexible Father, to Him whom the Old Testament shows us, overcome with anger, scarcely appeased by the smoke of the pyres, the inconceivable attractions of burnt-offerings. In this chant it asserted itself still more savagely, for it threatened to strike the waters, and break in pieces the mountains, and to rend asunder the depths of heaven by thunder-bolts. And the earth, alarmed, cried out in fear.
A crystalline voice, a clear child's voice, proclaimed in the nave the tidings of these cataclysms, and after this the choir chanted new strophes wherein the implacable judge came with shattering blare of trumpet, to purify by fire the rottenness of the world.
Then, in its turn, a bass, deep as a vault, as though issuing from the crypt, accentuated the horror of these prophecies, made these threats more overwhelming, and after a short strain by the choir, an alto repeated them in yet more detail. Then, so soon as the awful poem had exhausted the enumeration of chastisement and suffering, in shrill tones—the falsetto of a little boy—the name of Jesus went by, and a light broke in on the thunder-cloud, the panting universe cried for pardon, recalling, by all the voices of the choir, the infinite mercies of the Saviour, and His pardon, pleading with Him for absolution, as formerly He had spared the penitent thief and the Magdalen.
But in the same despairing and headstrong melody the tempest raged again, drowned with its waves the half-seen shores of heaven, and the solos continued, discouraged, interrupted by the recurrent weeping of the choir, giving, with the diversity of voices, a body to the special conditions of shame, the particular states of fear, the different ages of tears.
At last, when still mixed and blended, these voices had borne away on the great waters of the organ all the wreckage of human sorrows, all the buoys of prayers and tears, they fell exhausted, paralyzed by terror, wailing and sighing like a child who hides its face, stammering "Dona eis requiem," they ended, worn out, in an Amen so plaintive, that it died away in a breath above the sobbing of the organ.
What man could have imagined such despair, dreamed of such disasters? And Durtal made answer to himself: "No man."
In fact the attempt has been vain to discover the author both of the music and of the sequence. They have been attributed to Frangipani, Thomas of Celano, St. Bernard and a crowd of others, and they have remained anonymous, simply formed by the sad alluvial deposits of the age. The "Dies iræ" seemed to have, at first, fallen, like a seed of desolation, among the distracted souls of the eleventh century; it germinated there and grew slowly, nurtured by the sap of anguish, watered by the rain of tears. It was at last pruned when it seemed ripe, and had, perhaps, thrown out too many branches, for in one of the earliest known texts, a stanza, which has since disappeared, called up the magnificent and barbarous image of an earth revolving as it belched forth flames, while the constellations burst into shards, and heaven shrivelled like a parched scroll.
"All this," concluded Durtal, "does not prevent these triple stanzas woven of shadow and cold, full of reverberating rhymes, and hard echoes, this music of rude stuff which wraps the phrases like a shroud, and masks the rigid outlines of the work, from being admirable! Yet that chant which constrains, and renders with such energy the breadth of the sequence, that melodic period, which without variation, remaining always the same, succeeds in expressing by turns prayer and terror, moves me less than the 'De Profundis,' which yet has not its grandiose spaciousness nor that artistic cry of despair.
"But chanted to the organ the psalm is earthy and suffocating. It comes from out the very depths of the sepulchre, while the 'Dies iræ' has its source only on the sill of the tomb. The first is the very voice of the dead, the second that of the living who inter him, and the dead man weeps, but takes courage a little, when those that bury him despair.
Thank you for the great post! Salve Regina, Ave Regina Coelorum, and Regina Coeli are ones I like very much. Also, thanks for the PDF, I did find it helpful.
Beautiful!! You chose such wonderful chants and beautiful recordings and images to accompany each. This is truly excellent.
This was a lot of work, and I thank you- wonderful selections and very helpful to have the backstory, so to speak, for the various chants. Thank you again!
Thanks very much for this! Love your commentary too. Have you read the commentary about Deis Irae by Huysmans in En Route? He emphasizes the helpless terror that will be felt by all sinners on judgement day. That is certainly what I get from this magnificent song.
No, I'm not familiar with that Huysmans passage! If you can conveniently find it and paste it in here, I think others would be interested too! Or leave a link.
As the first chords crashed on the organ Durtal recognized the "Dies iræ," that despairing hymn of the Middle Ages; instinctively he bowed his head and listened.
This was no more as in the "De Profundis" an humble supplication, a suffering which believes it has been heard, and discerns a path of light to guide it in the darkness, no longer the prayer which has hope enough not to tremble; it was the cry of absolute desolation and of terror.
And, indeed, the wrath divine breathed tempestuously through these stanzas. They seemed addressed less to the God of mercy, to the Son who listens to prayer, than to the inflexible Father, to Him whom the Old Testament shows us, overcome with anger, scarcely appeased by the smoke of the pyres, the inconceivable attractions of burnt-offerings. In this chant it asserted itself still more savagely, for it threatened to strike the waters, and break in pieces the mountains, and to rend asunder the depths of heaven by thunder-bolts. And the earth, alarmed, cried out in fear.
A crystalline voice, a clear child's voice, proclaimed in the nave the tidings of these cataclysms, and after this the choir chanted new strophes wherein the implacable judge came with shattering blare of trumpet, to purify by fire the rottenness of the world.
Then, in its turn, a bass, deep as a vault, as though issuing from the crypt, accentuated the horror of these prophecies, made these threats more overwhelming, and after a short strain by the choir, an alto repeated them in yet more detail. Then, so soon as the awful poem had exhausted the enumeration of chastisement and suffering, in shrill tones—the falsetto of a little boy—the name of Jesus went by, and a light broke in on the thunder-cloud, the panting universe cried for pardon, recalling, by all the voices of the choir, the infinite mercies of the Saviour, and His pardon, pleading with Him for absolution, as formerly He had spared the penitent thief and the Magdalen.
But in the same despairing and headstrong melody the tempest raged again, drowned with its waves the half-seen shores of heaven, and the solos continued, discouraged, interrupted by the recurrent weeping of the choir, giving, with the diversity of voices, a body to the special conditions of shame, the particular states of fear, the different ages of tears.
At last, when still mixed and blended, these voices had borne away on the great waters of the organ all the wreckage of human sorrows, all the buoys of prayers and tears, they fell exhausted, paralyzed by terror, wailing and sighing like a child who hides its face, stammering "Dona eis requiem," they ended, worn out, in an Amen so plaintive, that it died away in a breath above the sobbing of the organ.
What man could have imagined such despair, dreamed of such disasters? And Durtal made answer to himself: "No man."
In fact the attempt has been vain to discover the author both of the music and of the sequence. They have been attributed to Frangipani, Thomas of Celano, St. Bernard and a crowd of others, and they have remained anonymous, simply formed by the sad alluvial deposits of the age. The "Dies iræ" seemed to have, at first, fallen, like a seed of desolation, among the distracted souls of the eleventh century; it germinated there and grew slowly, nurtured by the sap of anguish, watered by the rain of tears. It was at last pruned when it seemed ripe, and had, perhaps, thrown out too many branches, for in one of the earliest known texts, a stanza, which has since disappeared, called up the magnificent and barbarous image of an earth revolving as it belched forth flames, while the constellations burst into shards, and heaven shrivelled like a parched scroll.
"All this," concluded Durtal, "does not prevent these triple stanzas woven of shadow and cold, full of reverberating rhymes, and hard echoes, this music of rude stuff which wraps the phrases like a shroud, and masks the rigid outlines of the work, from being admirable! Yet that chant which constrains, and renders with such energy the breadth of the sequence, that melodic period, which without variation, remaining always the same, succeeds in expressing by turns prayer and terror, moves me less than the 'De Profundis,' which yet has not its grandiose spaciousness nor that artistic cry of despair.
"But chanted to the organ the psalm is earthy and suffocating. It comes from out the very depths of the sepulchre, while the 'Dies iræ' has its source only on the sill of the tomb. The first is the very voice of the dead, the second that of the living who inter him, and the dead man weeps, but takes courage a little, when those that bury him despair.
Thank you for the great post! Salve Regina, Ave Regina Coelorum, and Regina Coeli are ones I like very much. Also, thanks for the PDF, I did find it helpful.
Angelus Press recently undertook a project of publishing hymns with accompanying text on YouTube.
Would you provide a link for us?
https://angeluspress.org/products/essential-latin-hymns?srsltid=AfmBOoo3L_TrVTsuPNh_udokX2yk46FcsCRK_IUv8UJD8q0M__LZ_K2X
Thank you, Julian, for this beautiful post. I appreciate you (left a tip) and all you do. Guess this is what comes from being reared by a genius.
Excellent selection!
Almost all the Marian hymns you have listed are ones that those chanting the compline would have to encounter within the year.
I would also include the tantum ergo sacramentum to the list for eucharistic adorations
Thank you for posting these selections! And thank you for the attached pdf. They are beautiful.
I love all these picks, but there are so many more!
It's a good start - and a sobering thought that we need to keep starting. Nunc coepi.