Music Notes for Sunday, March 2, 2025

Music for Transfiguration Sunday

O nata lux de lumine – Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585)

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‘Tallis is dead, and music dies.’ So runs the final line of Ye sacred muses, a consort song composed by William Byrd to mourn the passing of his friend and mentor Thomas Tallis. Probably a pupil of Tallis at one point, Byrd was not alone in considering him the greatest choral composer of his era. Talllis’ style encompassed the simple Reformation service music and the Continental polyphonic schools whose influence he was largely responsible for introducing into English music.

O nata lux de lumine, this Sunday’s communion motet in church, is a setting of two verses from the hymn at Lauds on the Feast of the Transfiguration. How fitting that this hymn (“O born light of light”) should be appointed to be sung at Lauds, the Office of Aurora or Dawn. Tallis’ setting makes no provision for the singing of the other verses and is obviously a motet in its own right rather than a hymn specifically for the Divine Office. Taking his earlier hymns as its starting point, it is homophonic throughout and perfect in its subtle harmonic and melodic touches and, much in the manner of Tallis’s English anthems, it repeats its final section.

O born light of light,
Jesus, redeemer of the world,
mercifully deem worthy and accept
the praises and prayers of your supplicants.
Thou who once deigned to be clothed in flesh
for the sake of the lost ones,
grant us to be made members
of your holy body.

Gerald Harder

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Music Notes for Sunday, February 23, 2025

 

Music for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

Praise to the Holiest in the Height – Text: John Henry Newman (1801-1890) / Music: John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876)

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Reflecting upon the death of an acquaintance, John Henry Newman wrote a poem entitled The Dream of Gerontius. Six stanzas from the poem, beginning “Praise to the holiest”, unaltered except for the repetition of stanza 1, were printed in the 1868 supplement to Hymns Ancient & Modern. Since then, nearly every hymnal has chosen it. It is the offertory hymn this Sunday in church.

The son of a banker, Newman was educated at Ealing and at Trinity College, Oxford. He Became vicar at St Mary’s, Oxford, in 1828, and while there became associated with Keble, Pusey and others in the Oxford Movement. Despite the scathing attacks made upon his religious sincerity following his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Newman left the memory of a great saint, a master of English prose, and a very fine poet. The tune Gerontius was composed to Newman’s words by John Bacchus Dykes for Hymns Ancient & Modern.

PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise,
In all his words most wonderful,
Most sure in all his ways.

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail;

And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God’s presence and his very self,
And essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he who smote
In Man for man the foe,
The double agony in Man
For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Should teach his brethren, and inspire
To suffer and to die.

Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise,
In all his words most wonderful,
Most sure in all his ways.

Gerald Harder

 

 

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