 Pange lingua gloriosi
|
Apr. 10th, 2006 @ 07:55 am 
|
|---|
Folks who see Meredith Willson's The Music Man are often startled to discover deep in the second act that the lovely near-lullaby ballad Goodnight My Someone is in fact the same melody as the stirring march 76 Trombones.
Even with that Great American Musical background, I am still stunned by the revelation that the most beautiful, solemn, mysterious and angelic Gregorian Chant of them all, the 13th century Pange Lingua of Thomas Aquinas, takes its underlying rhythm from more than a thousand years earlier, before the birth of Christ even.
It comes from a marching chant of the legions of Julius Caesar. Like Sherman's Army singing Marching Through Georgia, the Romani celebrated themselves and their leader by singing, "Ecce, Caesar nunc triumphat qui subgegit Gallias."
*******************
Aquinas slowed it down a bit and gave us:
Pange lingua gloriosi
Corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi,
Quem in mundi pretium
Fructus ventris generosi
Rex effudit Gentium.
Nobis datus, nobis natus
Ex inacta Virgine,
Et in mundo conversatus,
Sparso verbi semine,
Sui moras incolatus
Miro clausit ordine.
In suprema nocte coenae
Recumbus cum fratribus
Observata lege plene
Cibis in legalibus,
Cibum turbae duodenae
Se dat suis manibus.
Verbum caro, panem verum
Verbo carnem efficit:
Fitque sanguis Christi merum,
Et si sensus deficit,
Ad firmandum cor sincerum
Sola fides sufficit.
Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.
Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et jubilatio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio:
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.
Amen.
While I understand the need for choir masters to translate the above into rhyme, this is the best direct translation I have found:
Sing, my tongue,
The mystery of the glorious body,
And of the precious Blood,
Shed to save the world,
By the King of the nations,
The fruit of a noble womb.
Given to us, born for us,
From a stainless Virgin,
And having dwelt in the world,
Sowing the seed of the word,
He closed in a wonderful way,
The days of his habitation.
On the night of His last supper,
Reclining with His brothers,
The law having been fully observed
With legal foods,
He gives Himself as food with His
Own hands to the twelve.
The Word in Flesh makes true Bread
His Flesh with a word;
Wine becomes the Blood of Christ,
And if sense is deficient,
To confirm sincere hearts,
Faith alone suffices.
Then let us prostrate and
Venerate so great a Sacrament,
And let the old law yield
To the new rite;
Let faith stand forward to
Supply the defect of the senses.
To the Begetter and the Begotten,
Be praise and jubilation,
Health, honor, and strength,
And blessing too,
And let equal praise be to Him,
Who proceeds from Both.
Amen.
[Because of the unique comments section, I am including a tag for the State University of New York at Albany for this entry.]
|
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 12:37 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Dear Bob:
Well, what the hell...the "Star Spangled Banner's" original tune was an Olde English drinking song, so why not something similar for the Catholic version of "Onward Christian Soldiers"?
Aren't you glad The Zoo didn't set it to a different tune, the way they did "Credo in Unum Deum" back at Holiday Sing 1969?
Jon G.
![[User Picture Icon]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/27459829/6191726) |
| From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rgoing |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 12:38 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Fortunately I don't remember that, but I have heard parts of the Pange Lingua sung to the tune of My Darling Clementine, though it doesn't scan the whole way, and I myself have done a stirring adaptation of the Ave Maria to Oklahoma!.
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 12:40 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Howie Kossover might have told you about how a chorus of six (all we could muster at the time), led by yours truly, did the whole thing in flawless Latin, starting out with a stanza in its original form, then breaking into the Zoo version, to the tune of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland." In its first (but by no means last) Holiday Sing appearance, The Zoo got a trophy for "Holiday Spirit." Not bad for a group then consisting of five Jews and a Pakistani Muslim.
Jon
![[User Picture Icon]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/47382528/2194) |
| From: | meep |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 06:06 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
I remember singing this song as a congregation, unaccompanied by instruments, at Trinity Chapel at NYU -- gorgeous song, but I don't know if it was using the Aquinas tune. It definitely wasn't to "Walking in a Winter Wonderland".
Which reminds me, I had an English teacher tell us once that we could sing any of Emily Dickinson's poem to "Yellow Rose of Texas" or "Theme Song from Gilligan's Island"... and now I can't read her poems without humming. Pity, really.
|
| From: | meep |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 06:07 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Oh, and I'm one of those annoying people who prefers to sing Latin in Classical pronunciation (hard c's and g's, and some vowel differences) as opposed to Church pronunciation (i.e., Italian.)
|
| From: | rgoing |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 08:29 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Ecclesiastical Latin was the standard pronunciation taught in schools until the 1960's. Stop me if you've heard this story, but a slightly older friend was in high school when the switch was made and he had a hard time adjusting. He said to Sister Anna Roberta in frustration:
"Sister, I absolutely refuse to believe that Julius Caesar said 'Waynie, Weedie, Weekie'!"
|
| From: | rgoing |
|---|
| Date: |
April 11th, 2006 01:19 am (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
Gilligan
|
(Link) |
|
By God, she's right! It's the Gilligan song!
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings, are.
None may teach it anything,
'T is the seal, despair,
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: |
April 10th, 2006 08:39 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
from the Editor of ASP-1973
|
(Link) |
|
Bob:
Thanks for your note. I occasionally have lunch with Mike Plotzker, SUNYA 1973, who was another member of the 1969 Holiday Sing team from Van Cortlandt Hall. They really did win “Most Christmas Spirit” and really were five Jews and one Muslim. Guttman, Plotzker, Kossover, Irving Mizus, Shaheen Rahman, and one more I can’t name right now.
Father Joe Cotugno said 8:30 Sunday Mass at my parish, Holy Trinity in Cohoes, for the past several years, often leaving on the run to then say Mass at the Psychiatric Center. Carol and I went to last Friday’s “wake” for him at Holy Trinity, and had a long talk with Sally and Dave Goodall. Sally is a relative of Father Joe (cousin?) and decades ago she was the Secretary and only full-time employee at SUNYA’s Student Association (where I first met her.)
Father Joe had an impact on everyone he met, and we miss him in Cohoes.
Regards,
Tom
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: |
June 11th, 2007 02:58 am (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
Re: from the Editor of ASP-1973
|
(Link) |
|
To set the record straight the group included me, Shaheen Rehman and the Zinman brothers but I don't recall plotzker or kossover being in it. There was one more but I can't recall his name. Jon Guttman was the conducter.
Irving Mizus
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: |
April 11th, 2006 02:24 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Unfortunately, this slant on Emily does get passed on in poetry circles and causes immediate contamination (resistance is futile). I heard it years ago from a wonderful avante gard poet in my poets' reading group named Elizabeth Robinson who is also an ordained minister. She heard it from a poet in Norman, Oklahoma. Dickinson's poetical structure was based on the form of familiar church hymns. But it sure does something to your head to hear her to the (hymnally structured, apparently) tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Most distressing -- like all those awful songs -- "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" springs immediately to mind -- that once they're in there won't go away.
-dale
|