Before the Tridentine reform, very few feasts had Scriptural readings in the first nocturn of the Divine Office. On Saints’ days, it was typical for readings of their lives to supply all the Matins lessons, while on those of Our Lord and Our Lady, the first two nocturns were usually taken up with a sermon about the feast, and the third by a homily on the Gospel read at Mass. There were, however, certain exceptions to this, such as Christmas and Epiphany, which always had the same readings from Isaiah that they do today. Among the feasts of the Virgin Mary, only that of her Nativity had Scriptural readings; these were taken from the Song of Songs, or Canticle of Canticles, as it was traditionally known in the Latin West, from its title in the Vulgate, “Canticum Canticorum.”
Two pages of a breviary according to the Use of Prague, printed in 1502, with the Office of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; the Canticle of Canticles is read in both the first and second nocturns. In many Bibles of this period, the Canticle also had notes added to the text to indicate who is speaking, as explained below: these were often incorporated into breviaries as well, as seen here. (Click image to enlarge.)
When the Birth of the Virgin was given an octave in the mid-13th century, readings from the Canticle were supplied for the days within it, but in the Tridentine reform, this arrangement was transferred to the Assumption. Readings from the Canticle were retained for September 8th and 15th, but in the reform of St Pius X, the latter date became the feast of the Seven Sorrows, which has readings from the Lamentations instead. After making the solemn dogmatic definition of the Assumption in 1950, Pius XII promulgated a new Office for it which has Genesis and First Corinthians in the first nocturn, so the custom is now retained only in its original place.
Pope St Gregory the Great (busily writing a Biblical commentary in cope and tiara, as one does), ca. 1370, by the Bohemian painter known as Master Theodoric, active in Prague ca. 1360-80.
The Canticle is, of course, one of the most difficult books of the Bible to interpret. Writing in the mid-3rd century, the great Biblical scholar Origen begins his commentary on it by noting that among the Jews, it is one of the parts of Scripture which the young are not allowed to read, and is “reserved for study till the last.” St Gregory of Nyssa (335-95 ca.), who, like the other Cappadocian Fathers, was greatly influenced by Origen, refers to it repeatedly as a mystery: “Through the title ‘Song of Songs’, the noble text also promises to teach us the mystery of mysteries.” In the West, St Gregory the Great’s commentary became the standard work on the subject; he begins his prologue by stating that “through certain aenigmata, the divine Word speaks to the cold and languid soul, and from the things which it knows, insinuates to it in a hidden way that love which it knows not.” The word aenigmata (the plural of aenigma) means “things which are enigmatical or dark in a figurative representation; allegories; things which are obscure or inexplicable; riddles, enigmas, obscurities, mysteries.” It entered the Latin language from Greek partly through the Vulgate version of 1 Corinthians 13, 12, a verse which the King James Version renders with one its most intriguing and often-used turns of phrase, “We see now through a glass darkly.”
The beginning of the Song of Songs in Bible printed at Strassbourg in 1481, with the Glossa Ordinaria and other commentary material printed in any around it, as was commonly done in that era. (There is another “glossa ordinaria” for the law code of Justinian, which was produced by scholars at the University of Bologna at the same time as the Biblical one.)
In the early 12th century, a group of scholars associated with the cathedral school of Laon in France put together a collection of glosses on the text of the whole Bible. This became one of the standard textbooks for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond, and was therefore known as the “Glossa Ordinaria”. In its section on the Canticle of Canticles, many of the glosses explain certain verses by indicating the speaker; for example, the opening words “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” is explained as “The voice of those who lived before the coming of Christ, who pray to the father of the bridegroom, who is Christ.”
Since the Canticle was regarded as an especially difficult text, many early printed Bibles contain a series of very brief notes interpolated into the text of it, which are derived from the Glossa Ordinaria, or one of the other works of Biblical interpretation that were commonly read in the Middle Ages, the Postillae of Hugh of St Cher, and the commentary of the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra.
Here, then, is the text of the first chapter of the Canticle of Canticles, with the notes as printed in the Bible shown above.
The beginning of the Song of Songs, with the glosses in red, from a Latin Bible printed at Nuremberg in 1516. (The rest of the book is seen below; the type is small enough that the whole book fits into two pages.)
The voice of the one who longs for the coming of Christ. Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine, ₂ smelling sweet of the best ointments. The voice of the Church to Christ. Thy name is as oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved thee. ₃ Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments. The voice of the bride to the young women. The king hath brought me into his storerooms: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous love thee. The Church (speaking) about its sufferings₄ I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon. ₅ Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour: the sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards: my vineyard I have not kept. The voice of the Church to Christ.₆ Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions. The voice of Christ to the Church.₇ If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds. ₈ To my company of horsemen, in Pharao’s chariots, have I likened thee, O my love. ₉ Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove’s, thy neck as jewels. The voice of the friends (of the bridegroom).₁₀ We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver. The voice of the Church (speaking) about Christ.₁₁ While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof. ₁₂ A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts. ₁₃ A cluster of cypress my love is to me, in the vineyards of Engaddi. The voice of Christ.₁₄ Behold thou art fair, O my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as those of doves. The voice of the Church.₁₅ Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and comely. Our bed is flourishing. ₁₆ The beams of our houses are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees.
Before the Tridentine reform, very few feasts had Scriptural readings in the first nocturn of the Divine Office. On the feasts of the Saints, it was typical for readings of their lives to supply all the Matins lessons, while on those of Our Lord and Our Lady, the first two nocturns were usually a sermon about the feast, and those of the third a homily on the Gospel read at Mass. There were, however, certain exceptions to this, such as Christmas and Epiphany, which always had the same readings from Isaiah that they do today. Among the feasts of the Virgin Mary, only that of her Nativity had Scriptural readings; these were taken from the Song of Songs, or Canticle of Canticles, as it was traditionally known in the Latin West, from its title in the Vulgate, “Canticum Canticorum.”
Two pages of a breviary according to the Use of Prague, printed in 1502, with the Office of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; the Canticle of Canticles is read in both the first and second nocturns. In many Bibles of this period, the Canticle also had notes added to the text to indicate who is speaking: “The voice of Christ, (speaking) to the Church”, “the Church (speaking) about its tribulations” etc. These were then often incorporated into breviaries, as seen here. (Click image to enlarge.)
On the Assumption and through its octave, the readings of the first two nocturns were taken from a sermon known from its opening words as “Cogitis me.” This purports to be a letter of St Jerome, written to his great friend Paula and her daughter Eustochium (who are both also Saints), in which he expounds his belief in the Assumption of the Virgin, and exhorts them to imitate Her as a model of consecrated life. In reality, it was written by St Paschasius Radbertus, a monk of the ninth century, when “forgeries” of this sort were not looked upon as frauds or acts of deception. Patristic scholar Jaroslav Pelikan notes that Paschasius “under the name of Saint Jerome made a far more substantial contribution to the history of Marian spirituality and devotion than any of the genuine works of Jerome, or for that matter than (his own) other principal work … on the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” (“The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality”, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, Paulist Press, 1987.)
In the early 16th century, however, Erasmus had shown that “Cogitis me” was certainly not by St Jerome, although he did not know who the true author was. It was therefore removed from St Pius V’s breviary and replaced by writings of other Church Fathers. (Ironically, the readings from St Athanasius assigned to the feast in the first edition were also later determined to be not actually his, and were removed from the second edition published by Clement VIII in 1602.)
The upper half of a polyptych of the Assumption, with Ss Paul and Jerome, Catherine of Alexandria and Clare of Assisi, 1529-30, by Alessandro Bonvicino (1492/5 - 1554), known as “Moretto da Brescia.”
The Tridentine breviary also conformed all Matins of nine readings to the arrangement previously found only on major Sundays and a handful of feasts, with Scripture readings in the first nocturn. The Canticle of Canticles, previously assigned to the Virgin’s Nativity and its octave, was then transferred to the Assumption. (On the Nativity itself, they were retained for the feast and the octave day, but not the days between.) The working notes of the editors of this breviary have never been discovered, so we are often left to guess what motivated their changes. They may have thought it was better to emphasize the solemnity of the older and greater of the two feasts by giving it proper readings for every day. But this may also have been done because the readings of the Divine Office in August are, by a very ancient custom, given over to the Sapiential books. The Canticle is always treated as one of these, since it has the same putative author as the others, King Solomon; this is why when they are read at Mass, they all have the same title, “A reading from the book of Wisdom.”
The readings are arranged as follows:
August 15
chapter 1 (1-16)
August 16
chapter 2 (1-17)
August 18
chapter 4, 1-4 and 7-15
August 19
chapter 5, 8-12
chapter 6, 1-5 and 8-12
August 21
chapter 7 (1-13)
chapter 8, 1-4
August 22
chapter 8, 5-14
Two days within the octave have no such readings: August 17th, the octave of St Lawrence, and the 20th, the feast of St Bernard. (The readings of the 16th, 19th and 21st were later removed as other Saints were added to the calendar on those days.)
Palestrina presents his first book of Masses to Pope Julius III; part of the frontispiece of the book itself, which was published in 1554. Julius (whose scandal-ridden papacy was a profound embarrassment to the rising reform movement within the Church; his papal name has never been used again), had been bishop of the very ancient suburbicarian see of Palestrina, about 24 miles to the east of Rome. It was he who called the great musician from his position as organist in the cathedral of his native town to work in the choir of St Peter’s basilica. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
In 1584, when this custom was still less than 20 years old, the great Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 ca. – 1594) published a collection of 29 motets of texts from the Canticle. There seems to be no information available about their intended use, and particularly, whether they were deliberately conceived to be sung during Mass. Two of the wise men whom I consult on such matters had never heard anything on the subject. I therefore make bold to offer here an observation about them, and no more than that; if anyone who knows more chances to read this, I would be very interested to hear what you have to say, so please leave a comment in the combox, or send me an email at the address on the left sidebar. If it’s interesting enough, I might even make a post about it.
Of these 29 motets, the texts of all but one, the 18th, coincide with the readings for the Assumption and its octave, although they do not include all the verses that are in the breviary. (There are none from chapter 8, so the octave day is not included.) But more interestingly, the same verses that are omitted from the breviary are also not used by Palestrina. The motets taken from chapters 4 and 5 begin at the same verses as readings on August 18 and 19, and those from chapter 6 omit the same verses (8-9) which are omitted in the breviary. The two chapters which get the most thorough treatment, the first (motets 1-8) and second (motets 11-17), are also the ones used on other feast days of the Virgin, the former on Her Nativity, and the latter on the Visitation.
These motets are also quite short, averaging about 2 minutes and 45 seconds each. This would make them very appropriate for the sweltering Roman summer when these feasts are celebrated, a time of year in which we may reasonably guess that people would not want the liturgy to be excessively prolonged by lengthy musical pieces.
Palestrina came to Rome in 1551, and worked there for 43 years, at St Peter’s Basilica, St Mary Major and St John in the Lateran. Given the circles in which he moved, it seems quite possible that he knew the clerics who edited the Tridentine breviary. Taken all together, these things seem to make for at least the possibility that he deliberately selected his texts out of the breviary, and intended them to be used during the Masses of Our Lady’s major feasts in the summer.
Here is a very nice recording of the whole set by the Hilliard Ensemble.
Some time ago, when my duties with two different choirs had me attending both the traditional and post-Conciliar rites, I noticed a striking difference in content and tone in the Advent Collects of the two rites, so I decided to look into the contrast between the totality of their Advent Collects. [1]
In the traditional rite, the Collects of the first, third, and fourth Sundays of Advent address the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity:
Stir up Thy power, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that from the threatening dangers of our sins we may deserve to be rescued by Thy protection, and to be saved by Thy deliverance: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Collect, Sunday I, MR 1962)
Incline Thine ear, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to our petitions: and, by the grace of Thy visitation, enlighten the darkness of our minds: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Collect, Sunday III, MR 1962)
Stir up Thy power, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come, and with great might succour us: that by the help of Thy grace that which is hindered by our sins may be hastened by Thy merciful forgiveness: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Collect, Sunday IV, MR 1962)
On the Second Sunday, the Father is addressed:
Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thine only-begotten Son: that through His coming we may deserve to serve Thee with purified minds: Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost… (Collect, Sunday II, MR 1962)
If we look at the Ember days, the picture is more complex. Ember Wednesday’s first Collect addresses the Father (“Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God … through our Lord”) while its second Collect addresses the Son (“Hasten, we beseech Thee, O Lord, tarry not”). Ember Saturday’s six different Collects address the Father four times — namely, the second through the fifth Collects — but the first and last are to the Son:
O God, who seest that we are afflicted because of our iniquity, mercifully grant that we may be comforted by Thy visitation. Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Ember Saturday, first Collect, MR 1962)
Mercifully hear, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the prayers of Thy people: that we who are justly afflicted for our sins may be comforted by the visitation of Thy loving kindness: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Ember Saturday, last [sixth] Collect, MR 1962)
The Collect on Ember Friday likewise addresses the Son:
Stir up Thy might, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that they who trust in Thy loving kindness may be the more speedily freed from all adversity: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Ember Friday, MR 1962)
Apart from special Collects for certain feast days (e.g., the Immaculate Conception), these are the only Collects found in the traditional Roman Missal for the Advent season as such (and, importantly, they are never omitted, because even on feasts, the Advent feria is always commemorated). Therefore the missal furnishes a total of 7 distinct collects addressed to the Son, and 6 to the Father, in the following pattern:
First Sunday – SON Second Sunday – FATHER Third Sunday – SON Ember Wednesday – FATHER, SON Ember Friday – SON Ember Saturday – SON, FATHER, FATHER, FATHER, FATHER, SON Fourth Sunday – SON
Going out on an allegorical limb with my betters, such as William Durandus, I would note that, according to the Fathers of the Church, the number 6 represents creation, because of the 6 days in Genesis, and because 6 is one of those rare numbers whose component parts, 1, 2, and 3, are equal whether they are added (1+2+3) or multipled (1x2x3), suggesting the relative integrity and solidity of the created order: “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” At the same time, six falls one short of the number seven, the number of perfection and of rest, indicating that creation, particularly the rational creature, is incomplete until it rests in God — and that, after the fall of Adam, it is groaning for redemption from sin. Jesus Christ, in other words, is the One who, “added” to creation, brings it to its perfection and ultimate rest in the beatific vision. Thus, a group of six Collects for the Father, to whom is appropriated the power of creating the universe, and a group of seven collects for the Son, to whom is appropriated the wisdom and mercy of redemption, appears beautifully fitting.
In the post-Conciliar redaction, on the other hand, many of the ancient Advent Collects were scrapped or reconfigured, and nearly all of the Collects were forced into the Patricentric mold so favored by reformers in the grip of archaeologism or antiquarianism, who removed prayers directed to the Son whenever and wherever possible. [2] We have this new series of Sunday Collects, none of which addresses the Son:
Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ… (Sunday I, Collect, MR 1970/2002)
Almighty and merciful God, may no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, but may our learning of heavenly wisdom gain us admittance to his company. Who lives and reigns with you… (Sunday II, Collect, MR 1970/2002)
O God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing. Through our Lord Jesus Christ… (Sunday III, Collect, MR 1970/2002)
Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. Who lives and reigns with you… (Sunday IV, Collect, MR 1970/2002) [3]
The ferial Collects added to the new missal also follow the same subordinating pattern, with only two exceptions addressed to the Second Person: Friday of the first week uses the same prayer as the first Sunday of Advent in MR 1962, and the Collect of the morning Mass on December 24 uses a version of the second collect for Ember Wednesday in MR 1962. Because there is a different Collect every day in the MR 1970/2002, while the MR 1962 uses certain prayers again and again, a little math will give us telling results. Of all the Advent Collects in the usus recentior, 27 are addressed to the Father, and only 2 to the Son. During the same season, the usus antiquior will have prayed Collects addressed to the Son as God 21 times, and to the Father 12 times.
What do we make of this difference?
These Christocentric Collects of the usus antiquior, both in their addressee and in their repetition, emphasize the urgency of the Church’s cry during the Advent season, the cry of all mankind and of all creation longing for its very Lord to come, by an ineffable miracle, into its bosom, to heal it and elevate it from within: VENI, DOMINE — Come, Lord Jesus, do not delay. Maranatha. Rise up and save a fallen race. Come to rescue us from our misery and sin. We are calling out to the Messiah, the Christ of Israel, who has already come to earth, whom we wish to invite again into our hearts, and who will return to judge the living and the dead. Advent is the season of expecting the long-awaited Redeemer and Savior, and we, in our holy impatience, cannot resist calling out to Him. EXCITA, we boldly say, over and over: Stir up Thy power and come, do not delay, do not be silent, do not be invisible, do not leave us to our wretchedness. O Word, eternal Life, take on flesh and touch us with Thy flesh. Only Holy Mother Church, filled with the Spirit of God, could dare to pray thus, placing these words on the lips of our ancestors and of so many saints who worshiped with the traditional Roman Rite.
In short, the usus antiquior missal presents us with a spirituality of Advent that is distinctive and fitting to it, whereas the usus recentior missal conforms its prayers to a generic rule prescribed by academic liturgists. The old Collects are highly expressive, emotionally charged, as of the longing of the bride for her Bridegroom, to whom she sings and whispers directly. In her passionate love she is more caught up in beseeching Him whose face she longs to see than in politely asking His Father to send Him when the time is right (though, of course, with her gentle courtesy, she also speaks humbly to His Father, since the two are inseparable in their Godhead). It is the fervor of the Song of Songs carried over into liturgical prayer. [4]
Modern liturgists approach liturgy as if it were an a priori science: you start with principles and deduce consequences. Therefore you have to change around the Collects (for instance) if they don’t conform to your particular set of principles. In reality, liturgy is thoroughly a posteriori: it is an historical testament to which countless individuals contributed, a massive organic complexus of particulars that could have been otherwise but are the way they are, a river running down the ages into which innumerable streams have flowed. Thus, we must look to the liturgy as it is and seek to understand why it unfolded in this manner, rather than doing violence to it by forcing it to embody one’s mental presuppositions.
The change to the Advent Collects is a good example of the cold rationalism of the reformers. It would be one thing if a liturgical rite had always addressed prayers to the Father on a certain feast or in a certain season. No one, obviously, is saying there is anything wrong with doing that, for it is the customary mode of address in all historic missals. But it is quite another thing if one’s actual liturgy for many centuries, perhaps for as long as we have records (and, moreover, the liturgy that one had prayed oneself!) always prayed to the Son on certain days, marking them out as special and deserving of a special devotion to the Lamb of God. To care little or nothing about the fact that, by a series of committee decisions, one would be cutting out and ceasing to utter those hallowed prayers to Our Lord in the weeks running up to His Nativity shows the extent to which the liturgy, for these men, must have already ceased to be something deeply felt and lived. It had become, instead, the prey and sport of their theories of improvement, and in this sense, something believed to be inferior to their wills and intellects. This is perhaps the worst indictment of their entire modus operandi: that prayers for which Catholics would in former ages have been prepared to lay down their lives were treated as so many raw ingredients to be chopped and mixed in an industrial kitchen.
Indeed, it is more than a little ironic that the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in the traditional Roman Rite is 1 Corinthians 4, 1-5, wherein St. Paul says, in words that are repeated four times in the Divine Office:
Brethren: Let a man so account us, as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Now here it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful/trustworthy.
St. Paul is telling us that the minister of Christ, the steward of His mysteries, is required to be faithful to that which he is dispensing or administering, namely, the sacraments, the liturgy, the heritage he receives from another, in regard to which he is not a master but a servant. Of course, this reading, too, disappeared from Advent in the sack of the Roman Rite, no doubt because it was deemed seasonally inappropriate.
These final days of Advent, when we address the Son of God in the great “O Antiphons” at Vespers, let us cherish the many subtle and obvious blessings He has given to us through the traditional liturgy. Let us thank Him for the countless ways it forms and nourishes our souls in the school of the Lord’s service. And let us seek its return on the widest possible scale to churches everywhere. For this intention, too, we pray to our Sovereign King and Eternal High Priest: Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni.
NOTES
[1] Lauren Pristas is naturally the preeminent scholar on all such questions. See chapter 3 of her The Collects of the Roman Missals.
[2] I discuss the many instances of this subordinating tendency and their implications in chapter 6 of my book Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis.
[3] I am aware that much of the language in these prayers is drawn from historical sources, but their placement and arrangement here, and the corresponding displacement of the customary prayers, is, for the Roman Rite, an innovation pure and simple.
[4] Readings and antiphons from the Song of Songs are found much more often in the traditional Missal and Divine Office than in the Novus Ordo books, but to explore the reasons behind that anti-medieval shift would require a separate article.
How do you paint the love of God? Love is not something we will ever see directly, and this creates difficulties for artists who work in a purely visual medium. The answer for many who wish to represent the greatest virtue has been to look for inspiration in the allegorical account of God’s love in the Song of Songs.
This is the third of three reflections on the Song of Songs, an intense love poem as illustrated by different artists. Part 1 - The beloved is in the garden, the beloved is the garden was a reflection on the implications of the symbolism of the garden, a place of fertility and beauty. Part 2 - The beloved is the lover, and the lover is the beloved was a Christian response, inspired by the Song of Songs, to Marxism, social justice, critical theory, and radical feminism.
Part 3 - A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed - Mary the great lover and most beloved of God
One traditional pictorial representation of God’s love as described in the Song of Songs focuses on the interpretation of the book as an allegory of the Father’s love for Mary, the Mother of God. Mary is understood to be the personification of the ‘garden enclosed’ and the ‘fountain sealed’, from verse 4, 12: “She is a garden enclosed, my sister, my promised bride; a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain.”
In Latin this is Hortus conclusus – garden enclosed - and Fons signatus – sealed fountain - and there are genres of paintings that have these Latin names.
The Mother of God is likened by the Church Fathers to a garden because of Her fertility as a perfect mother, and the source of the cultivation of the new Tree of Life originally in the Garden of Eden, as described in the book of Genesis.
The Fall, which took place in Eden, resulted from Adam and Eve succumbing to temptation and eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. St Ephraim the Syrian, the Christian commentator from the 4th century AD, declared a Doctor of the Church in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV, believed that Adam and Eve were subsequently expelled from Eden in order to prevent them from eating of the Tree of Life. If they had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Life, he says, it would have resulted in their living forever in the misery of their fallen state. With Christ’s establishment of His Church, Christians in communion with the Church are now able to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, the fruit of which is Christ himself present in the Eucharist. By this, we are permitted to live forever, partaking of the divine nature.
Mary is not only the garden enclosed, she is also the Fons conclusus, a fountain of life sealed by her perpetual virginity. The image of ‘living’, that is flowing, water is often connected to the Spirit that brings life out the dry ground of our hearts, and leads us to eternal life. So the Virgin is a garden, watered by the living water of the Holy Spirit, from which springs the Tree of Life, Christ. The garden is enclosed and the fountain sealed because she remains perpetually a virgin.
The Mother is both the beloved and lover of the Father, passive and responsive. As such she is most beloved and the great lover of God, both active and passive. She is the greatest lover in the human race, aside from Christ himself.
She is therefore a lover whose pure love for God is a type for perfect Christian feminism, and a perfect human love that is a model for all of us in every relationship, a model that can be the basis of justice in the family and society. Christian feminism neither diminishes the active, vigorously personal, and distinctly feminine role of women in any loving interaction, nor does it blur the distinction between the natures of men and women.
Radical feminism refuses to consider divine love as a type for all love. As a result, its influence is the opposite of what it intends. It proposes patterns of behavior that rupture their relationships with others and degrade their capacity to love and be loved. The result is greater misery and bitterness towards others.
In common with the left in general, it is common for radical feminists to accuse those who disagree with their ideas as ‘haters’. I have some sympathy for them in this, because I suspect that they genuinely feel hated, although they falsely blame those around them for this. The fact is they feel hated because they do not feel loved. And they do not feel loved because they do not accept the love of God. This is as a result of their own choices, not God’s, and it has nothing to do with those whom they blame for how they feel.
We are all sinners, and this tendency to blame others for the unhappiness we feel when we rupture the relationship with God goes with the human condition, of course. However, if we at least acknowledge at some level our need for God, and are inclined to recognize, however imperfectly, that we are the cause of our own unhappiness, then through the infinite mercy of God we can be happy.
All of us, therefore, can benefit from considering the perfection of Mary as a lover in the hope of perfecting the pattern of our love of others.
This painting of the Garden Enclosed shown above was made in the 15th century by a German artist named Stephan Lochner, a work in the late Gothic style known as “International Gothic.” Mary is portrayed as the garden, set in a garden. Angels adore their queen and her son the King. The detailed and beautifully rendered blue mantle spreads out, and connects the figure visually with the gorgeous detail in the portrayal of the flora. The embossed details in the gilding extend the garden upwards and lend a sense of the heavenly dimension. Mary wears a crown as Queen of Heaven
Other common portrayals of Mary connect her to a garden so as to reinforce the point that she is the New Eve, the exemplar of cooperation with grace in the work of redemption. For example, images of the Annunciation, which is the prequel, so to speak, of the Garden Enclosed, will often show a garden, typically in spring, newly bursting into life. The common thread is that both show Her as a sign of fertility and superabundance that opens the door to the incarnation of the Eighth Day of creation, Christ, and which is the new age that ushers in eternal life for all of us.
Sometimes it is subtle. For example, in this late 15th-century painting of the Annunciation by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, known as the Costello Annunciation, we see through the window a garden with a tree, presumably the Tree of Life, centrally and prominently placed.
Another example is the Tree of Jesse, the father of David; the line of Christ’s ancestry is shown, with Mary as the stem bearing the fruit of the Tree of Life, who is Christ. It is inspired by the passage from the prophet Isaiah, 11, 1: ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.’
How do you paint the love of God? Love is not something we will ever see directly, and so this creates difficulties for artists who work in a purely visual medium. The answer for many who wish to represent the greatest virtue has been to look for inspiration in the allegorical account of God's love in the Song of Songs.
This is the second of three personal reflections on the nature of love as described in the Song of Songs and how it has inspired artists. Part 1 wasThe beloved is in the garden, the beloved is the garden: this is a reflection on the implications of the symbolism of the garden; and next week, Part 3 will be A garden enclosed, a sealed fountain - Mary the great lover, and most beloved of God.
Part 2 - The beloved is the lover, and the lover is the beloved - a Christian response to Marxism, critical race theory, and radical feminism inspired by the Song of Songs.
See how fair is the maid I love! Soft eyes thou has, like a dove’s eyes. See how fair is the man I love, how stately. Green grows that bower, thine and mine, with its roof of cedars, with a covert of cypress for its walls. (Song of Songs 1, 14-16)
It is interesting that in the course of the Song of Songs’ 8 chapters, the voice of the lover switches. The book is written as a first-person narrative, in which the lover describes the beloved to the reader or addresses the beloved directly. This style never changes. But what does change periodically, without warning or explanation, is the subject who is speaking. At one moment the narrator addressing us is the bridegroom speaking to and of his bride; the next the narrator is the bride herself, addressing the bridegroom. This flipping of the subject occurs several times. When I first noticed this I found it confusing and assumed it was a mistake, arising perhaps because the best version of the Song of Songs we have is in fact a patchwork quilt of a text, pieced together from different and incomplete manuscript copies.
Nevertheless, I reflected, this is a book that has been judged by the Church to be divinely inspired in the form it comes to us, so I persevered.
Now, I now see something profound and radically enlightening in this literary device. It is for me a key to understanding an aspect of the Christian ideal of love that is exactly contrary to the caricature that is given by ardent critics of Christianity today, especially the idealogues of the neo-Marxist and socialist left, and of the radical feminist movement.
Christian or not, few, I suggest, would argue with the idea that when true love exists between two people, both are lover and beloved in the relationship, interacting in a dynamic exchange of love. The literary device employed by the writer of the Song of Songs that I have referred to, that regular change of narrator, communicates to us that natural mode of loving interaction between two people who are both lover and beloved.
The constant, unchanging element is the love that exists between them. I say unchanging, but it is paradoxically an unchanging dynamism. It is an emergent order that isn’t apparent to us until the lovers love each other, but it is in fact the final cause that existed before the lovers even existed, and called them to be lovers from the time of their conception. This love can be compared to a fountain that is so perfect in its operation that it appears as a static, suspended piece of gossamer or lace in which every strand is a fine stream of ‘living’, that is moving, water. This is the font of wisdom and wellspring of life and love that sustains all that is created. It is as though this canticle is not so much about the lovers as it is about the love that flows between them.
The best way for us to participate in such a love ourselves is not by studying what love is from a book, (even if the book is the inspired text of the Song of Songs), but rather by engaging with God lovingly, and most profoundly, of course in the Eucharist. To know God’s love by this means, through God’s grace, is to know God. This is means to the joy we all seek in life.
If the interpretations of the Church Fathers are correct, and the Song of Songs is an allegory of God’s love for his Church, then it affirms that I, in common with all humanity, can participate in an intimate and intense love with God, that places me closer to Him than the two lovers portrayed in the Song of Songs are to each other.
This is not, contrary to what bitter critics say of Christian love, a love in which one party dominates or bullies the other into doing his or her will - for that is not love at all. Rather, this is a love in which we are raised up to divine status as so as to be fitting lovers of God. No person is exempted from this opportunity, though sadly many reject it.
Those contemporary critics of Christianity, particularly Marxists and radical feminist theorists, claim that the Christian idea of love is a deceit designed to promote the exercise of power, in which the male ‘lover’ dominates the female ‘beloved’; and this unequal and distorted relationship is the primary source of tyranny in society. The Marxist argument, from which modern Critical Race Theory draws its ideas, is that Christianity alone of all religions promotes a power game in human relations, in which white males assert privilege through power. It is in the family that this supposed paradigm of oppression is established by the father, who dominates and enslaves his wife and the children. This is why Black Lives Matter, for example, openly stated on its website that its goal was to destroy the nuclear family and with it, the whole structure of Western society.
To the degree that the love described in the Song of Songs is a type for Christian love, we can say that the leftist characterization of the Christian ideal of love between men and women is false. Far from being the source of the imposition of patriarchal domination, the Biblical conception of love is in fact the source - the only source - of emancipation from such domination and subjugation, which would reign supreme were it not for Christianity.
Christian love elevates all people - both male and female - to the status of divine lovers and divine beloveds, as part of the Church and as part of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is Christianity alone that offers us the path to this supernatural gift.
God’s love is the ideal that all are called to accept and respond to, and as such is the type for all lesser, human loves. God’s love cascades down into all human interaction and permeates society.
While asserting that the left has mischaracterized Christianity and Christian love, Christians themselves should acknowledged that no human love is pure, and to the degree that love is absent from any relationship, domination might well become, in part, the modus operandi. The dominant party can be male or female, pale-skinned or colored.
Jean Le Noir: Two Fools. Miniature from the Psalter of Bonne of Luxemburg, 1348-49
However, it is utterly false to claim that Christianity is the source of this inequity. As stated, Christianity is the sole antidote to it.
The left sees something imperfect and wants to destroy it, that is why they want to destroy the nuclear family along with Western culture. Our response as Christians to an imperfect expression of love, on the other hand, should be the same as that to any other injustice, that is to seek to transform it by reaching for a greater love, that is, to seek God.
Through God’s grace, we can be perfected, and our imperfect relationships can be transformed and elevated in accordance with the standard of the divine pattern. A society founded on anything less than this reality will inevitably introduce not less, but yet more oppression, domination, division, conflict, and injustice. It is the exclusion of God’s love from human interaction will cause greater rupture, not less. The path to the justice and freedom that Marxists and radical feminists claim that they yearn for is to be obtained, paradoxically, through the very institutions they seek to destroy: Church and family.
Such a perversion of good and evil must surely be diabolical in its inspiration, and arises from the Fall - the first such occasion in which this occurred also took place in a garden, and ruptured the harmony of all relationships, which can only be restored by Christ.
I chose to show this aspect of Christian romantic love with this painting, which is an historiated initial from the opening of the book of Song of Songs in an 11th century bible that is in the library at Winchester Cathedral in England.The Latin text accompanying the initial says in translation: Here ends the book the He called Ecclesiastes. Here begins the book that is called in Hebrew Shir hashirim, in Latin Song of Songs. The voice of the church as she longs for the coming of Christ. The O is the first letter of the words Osculetur me - let him kiss me - which open the book.
The Latin text accompanying the initial says: Here ends the book which is called Ecclesiastes. Here begins the book that is called in Hebrew Shir hashirim, in Latin Song of Songs. The voice of the church as she longs for the coming of Christ. The O is the first letter of the words Osculetur me - let him kiss me - which open the book.
Contrast the picture of harmony in the garden with that of disharmony in the garden, as in the Temptation of Eve by the 18th-century English artist (and poet) William Blake.
How do you paint the love of God? Love is not something we will ever see directly, and so this creates difficulties for artists who work in a purely visual medium. The answer for many who wish to represent the greatest virtue has been to look for inspiration in the allegorical account of God's love in the Song of Songs.
This is the first of three personal reflections on the nature of love as described in the Song of Songs, and how it has inspired artists:
Part 1 - The beloved is in the garden, the beloved is the garden: this is a reflection on the implications of the symbolism of the garden as a place of fertility and beauty.
Next week, Part 2 - The beloved is the lover, and the lover is the beloved - a Christian response, inspired by the Song of Songs, to the evils of Marxism, critical theory, and radical feminism.
Finally, Part 3 - A Garden enclosed and a Sealed Fountain - Mary the great lover, and most beloved of God.
The beloved is in the garden, the beloved is the garden
Fair in every part, my true love, no fault in all thy fashioning!
Venture forth from Lebanon, and come to me, my bride, my queen that shall be! Leave Amana behind thee, Sanir and Hermon heights, where the lairs of lions are, where the leopards roam the hills.
What a wound thou hast made, my bride, my true love, what a wound thou hast made in this heart of mine! And all with one glance of an eye, all with one ringlet straying on thy neck!
Sweet, sweet are thy caresses, my bride, my true love; wine cannot ravish the senses like that embrace, nor any spices match the perfume that breathes from thee.
Sweet are thy lips, my bride, as honey dripping from its comb; honey-sweet thy tongue, and soft as milk; the perfume of thy garments is very incense.
My bride, my true love, a garden enclosed; hedged all about, a fountain shut in and sealed! What wealth of grace is here!
Well-ordered rows of pomegranates, tree of cypress and tuft of nard; no lack there whether of spikenard or saffron, of calamus, cinnamon, or incense-tree, of myrrh, aloes or any rarest perfume.
A stream bordered with garden; water so fresh never came tumbling down from Lebanon.
North wind, awake; wind of the south, awake and come; blow through this garden of mine, and set its fragrance all astir.
Song of Songs 4, 7-16
Tradition tells us that the eight chapters of this Biblical book describe the love of Solomon and one of his wives for each other in lyrical-dramatic scenes and reciprocal songs, each addressing the other in turn. The scenes depicted are set before, during and after the wedding day itself. The love and friendship between them are described in vivid, intense and at times passionate language.
Commentators have seen the account of romantic love between Solomon and his beloved as an allegory that reveals some of the mystery of the nature of God’s love as multifaceted and superabundant. It has been interpreted, for example, as a symbol of the love of God for his chosen people, Israel; of Christ for his Church; of Christ for each of us, as members of the Church; of God for all humanity; of the Father for the Son; and of the Father for the Mother of God.
The variety of loves that it represents tell us of the multi-faceted nature of God’s Love. We might say that God’s love is a simple single utterance that is, paradoxically, infinitely faceted and deep. Human love, therefore, for all the intense passion we read in this book, is but a pale imitation of a tiny part of the greater love that it points to.
God’s love, this chapter is telling me, has aspects of romantic love in it, but it is not romantic. God’s love is simultaneously paternal, spousal, fraternal, sororal, maternal, filial, even properly superficial on occasion (yes, superficiality has its place from time to time). But in trying to grasp its nature, I must be careful not to bring my conception of God’s love down to the level of the loves that I know and experience through my human relationships. God’s love is so much more than any one of them, more even of the sum of all these inferior human loves. It contains all of them in some way, but it is greater and richer than any of them in a way that is beyond imagination. It is ineffable.
The setting for this love poem is a garden. In scripture, gardens are depicted as places of seclusion, beauty, and peace. A garden is a sanctuary for quiet reflection, prayer, and contemplation, be it Eden, Gethsemane, or the gardens of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation. A garden is also a place of fertility in which life is nourished by springs and cultivated by a gardener to grow food and flowers. The garden, then, can be seen as a symbol of both spiritual and physical rejuvenation and nourishment.
It would seem natural to place these romantic interchanges in such a secluded and private environment - the passage quoted above is from Chapter 4. The first interchange of love takes place in this idyll, but then the imagery blurs the distinction between protagonists and their setting so that the people are likened to the beautiful and fruitful plants and animals within the garden. Then, most powerfully, as in the passage quoted above, the beloved becomes the garden itself. This emphasizes for me that the beauty of all creation, and the fruitfulness and fertility that we see in it, are all perceptible signs of God’s immense love. God’s love is always fertile and bears fruit superabundantly - so that the whole overflows and is greater than the sum of the constituent parts. Human love, which is only authentic to the degree that it participates in God’s love, is superabundantly fruitful too. Children, for example, are the great and most obvious fruit of love between men and women.
All creatures are in relation with each other in harmony and beauty and it is God’s love that sustains them and binds them to each other and causes them to bear fruit. When observed through the prism of the idea of love, the whole cosmos, in all its immensity and grandeur is a sign of something unimaginably more immense, grand, and beautiful, the love of God.
And here is the greater fact: we are all invited to be transformed and raised up so as to be fitting lovers and beloveds of that greatest of lovers, God, entering into the mystery of the Trinity, and partaking of the divine nature. He comes down to us and raises us up to Him. This is an extraordinary privilege and to assent to participate in it is the source of our Christian joy.
To illustrate the idea of love itself as a garden I have chosen the Song of Solomon by the Italian artist, Domenico Morelli, which was painted in the 19th century. I like this painting because the division between the lovers and the garden is blurred, just as the text itself blurs the distinction. However, Morelli’s handling of the subject, as I see it, ensures that the two lovers are still distinct entities placed prominently in the composition reflecting the hierarchy of being, in which mankind is the greatest of all God’s creatures. Nevertheless, neither of these figures is the primary focus of the painting, rather it is for me the love between them.
A couple of years ago, my family discovered the work of Israeli-born and Basel-trained early music specialist Elam Rotem (b. 1984), a keyboardist and singer who founded and directs the splendid vocal ensemble Profeti della Quinta (Prophets of the Perfect Fifth — a very Augustinian and Boethian name). Moreover, Rotem runs a delightful website called Early Music Sources, which contains superb educational videos on such questions as 17th-century monody, historical pitch, cadences, high clefs and transposition, Italian basso continuo, tuning and temperaments, tactus and proportions around 1600, the romanesca, improvisation, and intabulations.
His accomplishments as a performer along with these educational resources would already be more than enough feathers in the cap of any 33-year old musician. But there is something much more fascinating about Elam Rotem. He is a first-class composer of music in the style of the early 17th-century, not as an academic exercise or as an ironic postmodern reconstruction, but simply because he so deeply understands and loves the music of the early Baroque that he thinks musically in this language and speaks it in the form of new compositions. What is more, he sets to music texts of the Old Testament in their original Hebrew. The result is stunning new music that communicates with the dramatic intensity, lush elegance, and sonorous beauty of Monteverdi — as in this setting by Rotem of the Song of Songs 4:8–11, “Come from Libanus, my spouse, come from Libanus, come…” (the composer is the one playing, and singing from, the harpichord):
Or in this Sinfonia à 3:
Rotem has written two large-scale multi-movement works in this style, both of which have been recorded in sumptuous performances that I have listened to many times with great enjoyment, and cannot recommend too highly:
The links at Amazon include samples of all the tracks.
Naturally, such a countercultural but brilliantly successful endeavor is of immense interest to me, and I would think to many NLM readers, since those of us who celebrate or assist at the usus antiquior are promoting a liturgy (and its musical repertoire) that embraces the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, yet remains present among us down into our own times, and is still being enriched with new works of art — be they new churches, new vestments, new furnishings, or new musical compositions in Latin. For us, too, old forms of art are still alive, and that which may seem to some to be “dead” has never ceased to be the living language in which we worship.
I asked Mr. Rotem if he would be willing to do an interview for NLM about his work in the ongoing (and evidently burgeoning) early music revival. He graciously consented.
Interview with Composer and Early Music Specialist Elam Rotem
Peter Kwasniewski (PK): Mr Rotem, thank you for sharing your time and expertise with readers of New Liturgical Movement. We are interested in the question of the continuing relevance of the past to the present, particularly in the use of ancient religious rites, languages, and art forms. Music is frequently discussed in so-called “traditional” Catholic circles, above all the extensive use of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony, which are treasures of our heritage. So we are well-disposed to the work you are doing.
You have written some magnificent music in a late Renaissance or early Baroque style. How did you end up coming to this style as opposed to an earlier or later one? What is special about the early 17th century in your eyes and ears?
Elam Rotem (ER): The period around 1600 is unique in music history. New ways of composition, which are almost opposite to the ways in which music was composed until then, were invented and used. The concept of a single soloist that is half-singing and half-reciting (recitar cantando) and accompanied by simple harmonies, made it possible to tell stories in an immediate and dramatic manner. In addition, composers were exploring new harmonies that were not used before, and took the liberty to do so based on the texts that they were setting. If the character of the text was soft and sweet, so was the music. But if it was harsh, they didn’t mind composing harsh music that was intentionally unpleasant. The music’s main purpose was to amplify the text. Such stylistic environment is great for communicating emotions to the listeners, and especially for storytelling.
PK: Strikingly, your works are composed in Hebrew, which is not a language that has been much used for choral music intended for Western European and American audiences. What’s it like to set Hebrew in a musical style whose main languages were Latin and Italian? Do you have precursors or models you can look to? Do the Latin versions of texts from the Hebrew scriptures and their historic settings influence your work with the original language?
ER: I was inspired by the Hebrew psalms of Salomone Rossi (1622). Rossi, on the one hand, was a “normal” court musician, playing and composing instrumental and secular vocal music. He worked at the Gonzaga court in Mantua together with Claudio Monteverdi, and took part in Monteverdi’s productions. On the other hand, he also attempted to introduce Western/Christian musical traditions into the Synagogue. His Psalms and prayers in Hebrew were meant to be performed as part of the liturgy. Rossi was the first to bring such an idea to life and to print music in Hebrew. When trying to fill the big gaps in Rossi’s biography, I imagined how, in addition to his rather conservative liturgical works, he might have also composed some dramatic works in Hebrew for some special holidays, and how such works had little chance of survival, as the only surviving documents related to Rossi are his Venetian musical prints.
When composing, I had much pleasure working with the original texts in all their untranslatable beauty. Composing biblical Hebrew in stille rappresentativo is quite different from the motet style of Rossi, so I had to find my own way of doing so. The accents of the words in Hebrew are typically on the last syllable, which proved to be quite a challenge when trying to make the text flow in a recitar cantando manner.
Renaissance polyphony in Hebrew by Salomone Rossi
PK: You have composed many works from biblical texts on love (Quia Amore Langueo) and have written a veritable oratorio on the story of Joseph (Rappresentatione di Giuseppe e i suoi Fratelli). What attracted you to these parts of the Scriptures, and in general, is there something you are looking for when you choose your texts or themes?
ER: I composed Joseph and His Brethren first. I love the story, and I love how the original text tells it; very condensed and to the point, in an almost dry manner. So when suddenly a touching or poetic moment occurs it is amplified by the contrast to the other drier parts and the result is very moving. It was an enjoyable challenge to use this biblical text as a kind of libretto and bring the story to life. Apart from Joseph and His Brethren, in Quia Amore Langueo there are also some dramatic scenes (“Amnon and Tamar” and “Samson and Delilah”), as well as poetic motet-like texts from the Song of Songs. What I loved about the Song of Songs is the colorful texts full of images and contrasts — very appropriate and similar to the texts used around 1600 in general.
PK: Do you think it would be legitimate to compare the nation of Israel’s revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, when it had more or less been extinct, with your revival of Baroque musical language?
ER: This was suggested by Barney Sherman in an article about my compositions. I will just comment that I didn’t make a “revival of the Baroque musical language,” I merely took one more step on the same path that the early music scene was taking: instead of only adding ornaments or parts to existing compositions, or improvising pieces, I did a bit more. And I’m certainly not the only one; for example, Guido Morini performed and published his Baroque opera Solve et Coagula.
PK: Naturally, there will be critics who wonder how it is possible to “express oneself freely as an artist” if one must adopt the strictures or constraints of a certain musical style. What would you say to those critics?
ER: Art was and is always based on constraints. I don’t believe it’s important which constraints you use. As a performer and researcher, I did (and do) all that I can in order to “feel at home” with the music of around 1600. I’m playing this music for a living and this is my primary musical language. If I want to create and not only execute music, I will naturally use the language I know best in order to do so.
PK: I guess I would also ask the “inverse” of the last question. Modern art has boasted about “originality” for a long time now, but to be realistic, we do not seem to be living in an age of many great composers and great masterpieces. Do you think the modern idea of creativity or originality — that we must always be seeking something “new” — has something to do with our lack of worthy output?
ER: I do believe in the concept of “something new,” but on a smaller scale. It was not different in past periods: for example, Monteverdi composed a madrigal based on texts that had already been used by other composers, but there was still a place for his version — a new version of the music — although the text, musical language, and medium were the same as in other existing compositions. I think that the difficulty starts when the musical language and the medium must also be reinvented by the composer; it’s as if every time we want to say something we would have to invent a new language. Even assuming that the invented language is coherent and contains inner logic, it could be compared to trying to communicate using a language unknown to one’s interlocutor; if the listeners don’t understand the language, their experience is limited because they lack a stylistic frame of reference.
My focus on the style of the early 17th century frees me of this concern, seeing that composers of that time were bound to specific stylistic conventions.
Profeti della Quinta
PK: You and your colleagues in Basel are dedicated to the art of paradox: early music played in the contemporary world, on new instruments of period design. Can a historic musical style speak to moderns with the same “grammar, logic and rhetoric” with which it spoke to its original audience?
ER: I can’t know how the original audience experienced the music. I do know that around 1600 musicians were interested in expressing human emotions and moving the hearts of the listeners, and I believe that this can still be done today.
PK: Would you say that the qualities of early instruments are a major influence on and inspiration for your desire to compose in this style? Which comes first, the style or the instruments? Does something as subtle as the tuning system — which, as we know, went through so many variations in Western history — also influence your compositional voice?
ER: Instruments and temperaments are just certain details in the whole picture. They are important and inspirational, and it’s a good place to start (indeed this is how the early music movement started), but they are not the essence. The essence is the understating of the musical language, and in the case of dramatic music, the communication of the text and emotions.
PK: Our times have seen a remarkable increase in the use of male vocalists (altos, countertenors, falsettists) for parts that (outside of English choir schools) were conventionally given to female altos and sopranos. What do you think of this development? What motivated you to choose only male singers?
ER: Indeed the period around 1600 is the beginning of the inclusion of female singers in performances; before that period, one can say that generally music was performed predominantly by males. Most of the repertoire we are singing in Profeti della Quinta was probably performed by male singers, but we do include female singers sometimes (and definitely female instrumentalists). Otherwise, since this is the ensemble I’m working with, I composed the pieces especially for its singers, and tailored it to their abilities. This is, by the way, yet another aspect of historical composition, since baroque composers often composed a part with a specific performer in mind.
PK: How has your work — your compositions and the playing of your ensemble — been received in the early music world at large? Of course, early music specialists learn to improvise (and organists have never stopped doing it), but do you see any other musicians beginning to compose in the early Baroque style?
ER: My works were received warmly by the public, but with mixed feelings by some critics. It is always much appreciated, but some (especially musicologists but not only) still are not sure if such a thing is a “legitimate” work of art. I obviously think it is, and the public in the concerts seems to agree. By the end of 2018 Joseph and His Brethren will be performed for the fourteenth time and more performances are planned in the future. I think that this is not bad for a piece composed in the 21st century, in which many of the newly composed pieces are only performed once… As I mentioned above, there are other musicians in the early music scene that are doing similar things, but perhaps not on the same scale.
PK: Where have you found your work best received?
ER: Whether it was just one or two small pieces, or the complete Joseph and His Brethren, my compositions have been well received everywhere we perform them. Naturally, because of the language and cultural relevance, the performances in Israel were received with even more appreciation. As I mentioned above, when the human emotional experience is in the center of attention, it can and does speak to a wide public.
PK: Do you ever compose in other styles, whether earlier or later than the early 16th-century idiom? If so, will you share those works with your public, or are they just for private use? Are you working on any big projects at the moment, either of composition or of recording?
ER: Up to this time, I haven’t composed music in other styles. Unless I would also perform and research music in other styles, I don’t think I would compose in them. My intention is not to imitate music from other periods, but to express myself in the language I know best. At the moment I’m not working on any new compositions, but some new CDs of Profeti della Quinta are coming out soon: Psalms by Alexander Utendal (ca.1530-1581) and a collection of madrigals (Amor, fortuna, e morte - Madrigals by de Rore, Luzzaschi, Gesualdo & Monteverdi).
***
I would like to express my thanks to the composer for this interview and for sharing the gift of his music with us.
Here is a trailer for Joseph and His Brethren:
A final thought. The philosopher Charles Taylor is famous for claiming that modern man, who is a conscious and free self negotiating a world of optional beliefs and engagements, is forever cut off from the “enchanted cosmos” of pre-modern man, who naively saw himself as dwelling in a world of spiritual realities as real as, or more real than, material ones. We moderns are irreducibly different — there is “no way back.” I would think that a confirmed Taylorite would consider Rotem’s enterprise impossible, or merely academic or parodical. And yet, it only takes a pair of functional ears to discover that it is no such thing: it is eminently possible, convincing, passionate, and powerful. Crucially, it is experienced immediately and intuitively by those capable of understanding music; in other words, not as the result of a “lifestyle choice,” as Taylor imagines religion must now be, thanks to our awareness of alternatives. Might this give us a reason for thinking that the art of music is one way of refuting the thesis that naive access to an “enchanted cosmos” is no longer available to us, that we are cut off from our premodern ancestors?
Please visit my new personal website, www.peterkwasniewski.com, for news, information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press.
Probably this has been discussed at length by others elsewhere and I’m just a bit slow on the uptake, but I noticed this Advent as if for the first time — attending the EF and the OF every Sunday because of my dual choir responsibilities — how strikingly different in content and tone are the Collects of the Sunday Masses in the two forms. Then I decided to look into the contrast between the totality of their Advent Collects.[1]
In the traditional Latin Mass, the Collects of the first, third, and fourth Sundays of Advent address the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity:
Stir up Thy power, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that from the threatening dangers of our sins we may deserve to be rescued by Thy protection, and to be saved by Thy deliverance: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Collect, Sunday I, MR 1962)
Incline Thine ear, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to our petitions: and, by the grace of Thy visitation, enlighten the darkness of our minds: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Collect, Sunday III, MR 1962)
Stir up Thy power, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come, and with great might succour us: that by the help of Thy grace that which is hindered by our sins may be hastened by Thy merciful forgiveness: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Collect, Sunday IV, MR 1962)
On the Second Sunday, the Father is addressed:
Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thine only-begotten Son: that through His coming we may deserve to serve Thee with purified minds: Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost… (Collect, Sunday II, MR 1962)
If we look at the Ember days, the picture is more complex. Ember Wednesday’s first Collect addresses the Father (“Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God … through our Lord”) while its second Collect addresses the Son (“Hasten, we beseech Thee, O Lord, tarry not”). Ember Saturday’s six different Collects address the Father four times — namely, the second through the fifth Collects — but the first and last are to the Son:
O God, who seest that we are afflicted because of our iniquity, mercifully grant that we may be comforted by Thy visitation. Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Ember Saturday, first Collect, MR 1962)
Mercifully hear, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the prayers of Thy people: that we who are justly afflicted for our sins may be comforted by the visitation of Thy loving kindness: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Ember Saturday, last [sixth] Collect, MR 1962)
The Collect on Ember Friday likewise addresses the Son:
Stir up Thy might, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that they who trust in Thy loving kindness may be the more speedily freed from all adversity: Who livest and reignest with God the Father… (Ember Friday, MR 1962)
Apart from special Collects for feastdays (e.g., the Immaculate Conception), these are the only Collects found in the traditional Roman Missal for the Advent season as such (and, importantly, they are never omitted, because even on feasts, the Advent feria is always commemorated). Therefore the missal furnishes a total of 7 distinct collects addressed to the Son, and 6 to the Father, in the following pattern:
First Sunday – SON Second Sunday – FATHER Third Sunday – SON Ember Wednesday – FATHER, SON Ember Friday – SON Ember Saturday – SON, FATHER, FATHER, FATHER, FATHER, SON Fourth Sunday – SON
Going out on an allegorical limb with my betters, such as William Durandus, I would note that, according to the Fathers of the Church, the number 6 represents creation, because of the 6 days in Genesis, and because 6 is one of those rare numbers whose component parts, 1, 2, and 3, are equal whether they are added (1+2+3) or multipled (1x2x3), suggesting the relative integrity and solidity of the created order: “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” At the same time, six falls one short of the number seven, the number of perfection and of rest, indicating that creation, particularly the rational creature, is incomplete until it rests in God — and that, after the fall of Adam, it is groaning for redemption from sin. Jesus Christ, in other words, is the One who, “added” to creation, brings it to its perfection and ultimate rest in the beatific vision. Thus, a group of six Collects for the Father, to whom is appropriated the power of creating the universe, and a group of seven collects for the Son, to whom is appropriated the wisdom and mercy of redemption, appears beautifully fitting.
In the redaction of the Ordinary Form, on the other hand, many of the ancient Advent Collects were scrapped or reconfigured, and nearly all of the Collects were forced into the Patricentric mold so favored by reformers in the grip of archaeologism or antiquarianism, who removed prayers directed to the Son whenever and wherever possible.[2] We have this new series of Sunday Collects, none of which addresses the Son:
Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ… (Sunday I, Collect, MR 1970/2002)
Almighty and merciful God, may no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, but may our learning of heavenly wisdom gain us admittance to his company. Who lives and reigns with you… (Sunday II, Collect, MR 1970/2002)
O God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing. Through our Lord Jesus Christ… (Sunday III, Collect, MR 1970/2002)
Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. Who lives and reigns with you… (Sunday IV, Collect, MR 1970/2002) [3]
The ferial Collects added to the new missal also follow the same subordinating pattern, with only two exceptions addressed to the Second Person: Friday of the first week uses the same prayer as the first Sunday of Advent in MR 1962, and the Collect of the morning Mass on December 24 uses a version of the second collect for Ember Wednesday in MR 1962. Because there is a different Collect every day in the MR 1970/2002, while the MR 1962 uses certain prayers again and again, a little math will give us telling results. Of all the Advent Collects in the usus recentior, 27 are addressed to the Father, and only 2 to the Son. During the same season, the usus antiquior will have prayed Collects addressed to the Son as God 21 times, and to the Father 12 times.
What do we make of this difference?
These Christocentric Collects of the usus antiquior, both in their addressee and in their repetition, emphasize the urgency of the Church’s cry during the Advent season, the cry of all mankind and of all creation longing for its very Lord to come, by an ineffable miracle, into its bosom, to heal it and elevate it from within: VENI, DOMINE — Come, Lord Jesus, do not delay. Maranatha. Rise up and save a fallen race. Come to rescue us from our misery and sin. We are calling out to the Messiah, the Christ of Israel, who has already come to earth, whom we wish to invite again into our hearts, and who will return to judge the living and the dead. Advent is the season of expecting the long-awaited Redeemer and Savior, and we, in our holy impatience, cannot resist calling out to Him. EXCITA, we boldly say, over and over: Stir up Thy power and come, do not delay, do not be silent, do not be invisible, do not leave us to our wretchedness. O Word, eternal Life, take on flesh and touch us with Thy flesh. Only Holy Mother Church, filled with the Spirit of God, could dare to pray thus, placing these words on the lips of our ancestors and of so many saints who worshiped with the traditional Roman Rite.
In short, the usus antiquior missal presents us with a spirituality of Advent that is distinctive and fitting to it, whereas the usus recentior missal conforms its prayers to a generic rule prescribed by academic liturgists. The old Collects are highly expressive, emotionally charged, as of the longing of the bride for her Bridegroom, to whom she sings and whispers directly. In her passionate love she is more caught up in beseeching Him whose face she longs to see than in politely asking His Father to send Him when the time is right (though, of course, with her gentle courtesy, she also speaks humbly to His Father, since the two are inseparable in their Godhead). It is the fervor of the Song of Songs carried over into liturgical prayer.[4]
Modern liturgists approach liturgy as if it were an a priori science: you start with principles and deduce consequences. Therefore you have to change around the Collects (for instance) if they don’t conform to your particular set of principles. In reality, liturgy is thoroughly a posteriori: it is an historical testament to which countless individuals contributed, a massive organic complexus of particulars that could have been otherwise but are the way they are, a river running down the ages into which innumerable streams have flowed. Thus, we must look to the liturgy as it is and seek to understand why it unfolded in this manner, rather than doing violence to it by forcing it to embody one’s mental presuppositions.
The change to the Advent Collects is a good exampe of the cold rationalism of the reformers. It would be one thing if a liturgical rite had always addressed prayers to the Father on a certain feast or in a certain season. No one, obviously, is saying there is anything wrong with doing that, for it is the customary mode of address in all historic missals. But it is quite another thing if one's actual liturgy for many centuries, perhaps for as long as we have records (and, moreover, the liturgy that one had prayed oneself!) always prayed to the Son on certain days, marking them out as special and deserving of a special devotion to the Lamb of God. To care little or nothing about the fact that, by a series of committee decisions, one would be cutting out and ceasing to utter those hallowed prayers to Our Lord in the weeks running up to His Nativity shows the extent to which the liturgy, for these men, must have already ceased to be something deeply felt and lived. It had become, instead, the prey and sport of their theories of improvement, and in this sense, something believed to be inferior to their wills and intellects. This is perhaps the worst indictment of their entire modus operandi: that prayers for which Catholics would in former ages have been prepared to lay down their lives were treated as so many raw ingredients to be chopped and mixed in an industrial kitchen.
Indeed, it is more than a little ironic that the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in the traditional Roman Rite is 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, wherein St. Paul says, in words that are repeated again and again at Lauds and Vespers throughout the fourth week:
Brethren: Let a man so account us, as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Now here it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful/trustworthy.
St. Paul is telling us that the minister of Christ, the steward of His mysteries, is required to be faithful to that which he is dispensing or administering, namely, the sacraments, the liturgy, the heritage he receives from another, in regard to which he is not a master but a servant. Of course, this reading, too, disappeared from Advent in the sack of the Roman Rite, no doubt because it was deemed seasonally inappropriate.
These final days of Advent, when we address the Son of God in the great “O Antiphons” at Vespers, let us cherish the many subtle and obvious blessings He has given to us through the traditional liturgy. Let us thank Him for the countless ways it forms and nourishes our souls in the school of the Lord’s service. And let us seek its return on the widest possible scale to churches everywhere. For this intention, too, we pray to our Sovereign King and Eternal High Priest: Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni.
NOTES
[1] Lauren Pristas is naturally the preeminent scholar on all such questions. See chapter 3 of her The Collects of the Roman Missals.
[2] I discuss the many instances of this subordinating tendency and their implications in chapter 6 of my book Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis.
[3] I am aware that much of the language in these prayers is drawn from historical sources, but their placement and arrangement here, and the corresponding displacement of the customary prayers, is, for the Roman Rite, an innovation pure and simple.
[4] Readings and antiphons from the Song of Songs are found much more often in the traditional Missal and Divine Office than in the Novus Ordo books, but to explore the reasons behind that anti-medieval shift would require a separate article.
