The Stabat mater, which we have been listening to throughout Lent on Fridays, finds its origin as a Sequence for Mass on September 15, the feast of the Holy Cross and is used today as a Sequence for the Feast of Our Mother of Sorrows, September 16. As I have explained before, sequences are an insertion of the Middle Ages into the Order of Mass which had a strongly devotional and didactic flavor, which used the language of doctrine and theology (rather than scripture, strictly speaking) to communicate the faith. By the time of the Council of Trent, hundreds of them littered the liturgy, perhaps something akin to singing a sacred (but not strictly scriptural song) from our various hymnals each week before the Gospel. In the reforms of the Council of Trent, this pious custom was jettisoned from almost all Masses, save a small few. Even fewer remain today following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
The liturgical sequence invites us, through song and music, to consider and meditate on the greatest mysteries of our faith. Consider the fiery Dies Irae warning sinners of the coming of God to judge the living and the dead. Consider the elation of the Victimae Paschales Laudes proclaiming Jesus raised from the dead. Consider the breath of the Spirit breathed on the disciples in phrases and poetry of the Veni Creator Spiritus. In these last seven weeks, the intent of these articles were to highlight artistic attempts to capture the pathos of the Blessed Mother's own suffering at the foot of the cross, as a model and inspiration us today. Are we strengthened by the Mother's witness? Are we sorrowful for the sins that lead to such a great sacrifice? Can we stand faithfully by the cross and witness the glory of the Lord revealed for all time? That's the invitation of the Stabat mater and the series that completes today.
And so today, to finish up, the unvarnished, unaccompanied chant that dates to the medieval Church:
This week's Stabat Mater comes from a relatively unknown, but hauntingly beautiful rendition by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736). Unlike the other two, this is of a more Italian-Baroque style, written in the year of the composer's death, 1736 (at the tender age of 26). I had not known that this particular music was originally Pergolosi's, until searching it out for this week's post, but it is quite delightful--indeed, it is recognized as his masterwork. None other than the greatest master of the age, J.S. Bach, would do some 'holy borrowing' to incorporate it into his cantata on Psalm 51 written for the German language (and thus, another audience), which is where I am familiar with the piece. As Pergolesi's masterpiece, one must beg the question of what he might have been able to accomplish if he lived as long as J.S. Bach (1685-1750) or even the all-to-young Mozart (1756-1791)? Written for two voices and a small ensemble, the composition was written while he was convalescing at St. Luigi (St. Aloysius), a monastery in Naples. Along with this piece, his output from the period includes a one-voice Salve Regina(which is strikingly similar, if not a copy/re-work of the Stabat Mater) and a number of other sacred texts.
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) was a Czech composer of the late 19th century, whose symphonic style is often characterized as 'neo-romantic' with its full, lush orchestrations and ample choral support. The first movement of his Stabat Mater (Op 58), like Poulenc featured last week, has a 'modern' sound, employing a more chromatic palate than earlier periods. The first movement, on the text Stabat mater dolorosa, while not parroting the Gregorian theme, does employ downward scales reminiscent of the classic chant, setting a heavy, meditative tone. Indeed, the composer wrote this piece, in part, in response to the death of his children, no doubt sharing his grief with that of the Blessed Mother. In this context, the music does take on an inspired character which I would otherwise find hard to appreciate due to my own musical tastes: I tend to avoid syrupy-symphonic-Romanticism like the plague, and I am not too familiar or fond of other works in the Dvořák corpus. The work does clock in at nearly an hour and a half, taking its time to savor the underlying prayer.
Yesterday in part 1, I retold the story of the 1984 movie, Amadeus, ending with a clip of the amazing dictation of the Confutatis from Mozart's Requiem (K. 626). While this is, at best, an apocryphal story, like many such stories, the drama is perhaps a greater illumination of the truth of the human condition than actual historical events. In Salieri, a rival of Mozart who so desperately longed to be touched by God through music, we peer into the human heart's most desperate longing, its most urgent imperative, that of "amadeus," which means "love of God".
The wound tormenting Salieri as he listened to the inspired music of Mozart was that of envy. Envy is more than simply the desire of something that belongs to another. Envy, at its core, is sorrow over another's good... when the good of another person is perceived as an evil or privation to me. There is merit in desiring good things--in wanting to have the talent to play piano like a concert pianist, or to be the top of one's class at high school or college, to have friends and admirers like a celebrity, or to own a nice car like the neighbors. But such desires can easily lead us to do destructive, jealous things to others, while hallowing out in our own souls the ability to love that which is good. Thus envy is a dangerous, seductive sin. According to Dante, only pride is more serious and insidious an enemy. In more subtle forms, envy is expressed through gossip (destroying another's good name), diminishing another's good fortune (discounting the good of something that belongs to another... "Having a Timex is just as good as having a Rolex... all they do is tell time, anyway"), or turning away from the good altogether, ("Johnny is so much better at baseball than I am, I think I'll play basketball instead"). These more subtle forms of envy tend to point to narcissistic wounds living as parasites within our souls... parasites fed by our own sense of inadequacy, and inflamed by a corrupted sense of justice that the goods of another should, in righteousness, instead belong to us. The classic antidote to envy is the "cardinal virtue" of 'fraternal love'-- a love that rejoices in the good of others, and in doing so rejoices in the gifts of God. Such virtue is most difficult to obtain, as it requires a deep surrender of self-interested desires.
And so, after watching nearly two hours of Salieri being mercilessly wounded by envy, we come to the final reel, where he is finally toe-to-toe with his antagonist, who is dying in bed before him. The text before them says, "Confounded are the damned, doomed to unending flames. Lord, call me among the blessed. I kneel down in prayer, my heart contrite as ashes; carry me unto final health." Before laying out the first notes, Mozart pauses for a moment, looking off into space, and then focusing on Salieri Mozart asks,
"Do you believe in it?"
"What?" asks Salieri.
"A fire which never dies, burning you forever?"
Salieri, perhaps with a great deal of self-knowledge, replies, "Oh, yes."
"Possible?"
Salieri refocuses the attention of Mozart and in a moment, Mozart conjures up the very flames of hell in a fitting tone-poem: trumpets and tympani accenting downbeats, violins feverishly running up and down the scales, and the martial rawness of the men's voices, proclaiming, "Confutatis! Maledictis! Flambis acribus addictis, Confutatis maledictis!" Suddenly this frightful scene is punctured by the angelic song, "Voca, voca me. Voca me cum benedictis!"
I think that Salieri knew what hell was about. He had been there, and the curtain was parted even further that evening as Mozart dictated that section of the Dies Irae. Hell is not about horned monsters in red jumpsuits carrying pitchforks. It might not have even been about the specific sins and shortcomings of life in themselves. Hell is fundamentally the eternal alienation from God. Mozart, laying before him in final agony had yet to experience the depths of that kind of alienation, and was, perhaps, at a crisis of faith. "Oh, yes." Salieri believed in the flames. Indeed, the 'voice of God' heard in the inspired music of Mozart had tormented Salieri, who was still trapped in that deep spiral of envy. God would not 'send
Salieri to hell,' but rather, Salieri's corrupted desires in envy and his wounded pride transformed the experience of God's glory into hell for him, and there he would stay. "Confounded are the damned! Doomed to unending flames!"
But as he writes the notes, assembles the lyrics, and scores the Confutatis, for once, and perhaps the only time in his life, the voice of God, mediated through the dying Mozart, invites Salieri to participate in something... divine. But in this participation, Salieri still did not possess that voice in and of himself. He was not to be the instrument of God's glory... just the secretary. God was not about to let him, a mere "mediocrity", share in the smallest part of his glory. God himself would 'kill' Mozart to seal Salieri's fate. "[God] kept me alive to torture. Thirty-two years of torture... thirty-two years of slowly watching myself become extinct.... my music growing fainter... all the time fainter." While perhaps embracing the satisfaction of contributing to Mozart's demise in a small way, the joke would ultimately be on him: Mozart was dead, but his music would live on, assuring Salieri's defeat as a forgotten man and composer. Over thirty-two years, his life would become a testament to the completeness of his defeat.
It seems that in that moment, after the trauma of a failed attempt at suicide (perhaps as a final failed attempt to escape the judgement of God), and after the retelling of his story in confession, a revelation comes upon the elderly Salieri. In his struggle and enduring woundedness, he finally discovers that he was not to be a champion of divine music, but rather the 'patron saint' of mediocrities everywhere... an example to all those who would never measure up to their greatest dreams and aspirations, of those who will never know the blessing of God's favor... perhaps even of those who fought God and lost. As one who has suffered and lost, as one who has finally discovered himself and his humble place before God at the end of that struggle, he (and not the priest) can finally offer an authentic 'absolution' to other 'mediocrities' -- an act of mercy and simultaneous self-forgiveness which brings about deep internal reconciliation and peace. It is an act that would not be possible without the deliverance of re-telling the story and encountering God's mercy in a transformative way. [It is not a sacramental absolution, of course, but the same kind of 'absolution' that flows from compassion for others like him who struggle for self-acceptance and healing in the midst of woundedness... it is like the peace found in and offered by former alcoholics or drug addicts who make it their mission to assist others in overcoming addictions.] The cackle of Mozart's insane laughter is no longer a mockery of Salieri and his woundedness but is instead an affirmation of the divine joke that Salieri now 'gets'... his new destiny is to rest in the 'fraternal love' that heals envy and joins him in that same 'fraternal love' to mediocrities everywhere, starting in the sunlight of the new day at the asylum.
Tune in tomorrow for part 3. All Souls Day (November 2), is, in a certain way, a celebration of that yet-to-be-redeemed woundedness in us all that alienates us from God, yet promises to reveal the surest path of our redemption in his love and mercy. The 'poor souls' of purgatory enjoy God's favor as heirs to the kingdom while still longing for the complete healing and purification found in his mercy...
As many of my friends know, I deeply enjoy watching and collecting good movies. If asked my favorite, without a doubt, I point to the 1984 Academy Award winner, Amadeus, which is a drama based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as seen through the eyes of one of his rivals and contemporaries, Antonio Salieri. While the account is a fictionalized dramatization of the rivalry between the two men, it speaks so deeply to the human heart, the human desire to encounter and possess the divine, that the story is, so to speak, probably better than the truth.
The story opens with a despondent Salieri (F. Murray Abraham, Academy Award winner for Best Actor in this role), now an old man, crying out in the darkness of night, "Mozart! I confess I killed you! ...Forgive me Mozart!" After hearing a scream behind the locked doors of his apartment, we find that he has taken a knife to himself in an attempt at suicide, after which he is whisked away to an asylum and patched up. The next morning a priest comes by on his rounds and begs Salieri to offer his confession and make peace with God. Salieri proceeds to narrate the story of his rivalry with Mozart (Tom Hulce), from the very beginning.
Salieri remarks how he was never encouraged to develop his musical talent; his father "didn't care for music". The child prodigy Mozart, on the other hand, was carted all around Europe, performing 'like a trained monkey' for courts of royalty and ecclesiastical nobility, under the encouragement of his father, who taught him everything he knew. Upon his own father's death (which Salieri interprets as a 'miraculous gift'), Salieri finally has the freedom to take up his muse and with much success rapidly rises through the ranks of the musical elite, becoming the court composer in Vienna, writing more then 40 operas, and winning wide acclaim as one of the most accomplished composers in Europe.
It isn't until some years later, when Mozart appears at a concert at the palace of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, that Salieri and Mozart formally meet. Mozart is to direct a concerto, and Salieri muses whether the radiant talent of someone with Mozart's reputation might be "written on [his] face"... "who could he be?" And so, the camera pans across a room full of young men, dressed in waistcoats and finely-powdered wigs, engaged in polite conversation. One face after another, Salieri scrutinizes the room, looking for signs of one blessed by divine favor. A loud, boisterous rogue fiendishly chasing a woman momentarily distracts Salieri, until in his wanderings he finds himself alone in a room, surveying sweets and treats to be served at the event (Salieri was noted to be a 'sweet-tooth' in real life). Into the room comes the young rogue and the object of his pursuit. Along with Salieri we witness a vulgar, bizarre, flirtatious exchange between this couple. Meanwhile, as the party continues in another room, the whisper goes out, "where's Mozart?" A few moments later, in the distance, we hear the opening cadences of the glorious concerto, and the young rogue jumps up, shouting, "they have started without me!"
Salieri remarks as an old man, "That was Mozart! That giggling, dirty-minded creature I had just seen crawling on the floor!" Put-off by the young man, Salileri was nonetheless captured and enraptured by the unspeakable beauty of his musical output. In the years that followed, Mozart would come to Vienna and gain fame and notoriety by way of his music that Salieri could only see as a divine gift... a gift he desired and sacrificed everything for... his industry, his humility, even his chastity. But he determined that he had not received 'the blessing' of the divine music which animated Mozart... a music which was written as no other: finished, complete, perfect, as if dictated from the mind and voice of God himself. "I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at an absolute beauty." After being insulted and shamed by Mozart in the court and in public, and after discerning that a prima donna of his affections was fiendishly deflowered by this man-child, Salieri declared himself an enemy of God... for what good god would speak through the gross immaturity of such a beast? "There is no God of mercy," Salieri confesses, "just a God of torture." At a crisis point, we see him praying, begging, "Dear, God, enter me now. Fill me with one piece of pure music. One piece with your breath in it, to show me that you love me. Show me one sign of your favor, and I will show mine to Mozart." After a final spiritual crisis which he discerns as God's final rebuff, Salieri decided that his job in life was to destroy this impertinent little man who was an insult to all that is just and good and holy. Looking upon the crucifix, Salieri laments, "We, you and I, are enemies... because you choose as your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy... and give me for reward only the ability to recongize the incarnation." Setting the crucifix on a burning fire, he continues, "Because you are unjust... unfair... unkind... I will block you. I swear it. I will hinder and harm your creature on earth as far as I am able!" And so the movie proceeds tit-for-tat, until Salieri determines that the best way to get at Mozart would be an act of psychological warfare, ending in Mozart's murder. In this he could "finally triumph... over God!" (In the scenes where Salieri is an old man in confession, the early morning and day has now given way to the intense darkness night... it has been quite a long confession!)
Shortly following the death of Mozart's father, observing the anguish in Mozart's heart over his father's passing as expressed in the opera Don Giovanni, Salieri covertly commissions a musical setting of the Requiem (funeral) Mass, which he plans to receive and publish as his own composition. He's not quite sure how to kill Mozart, squeamish about the prospect of actually having to physically end his life. "First I must obtain the death Mass, then I must achieve his death... it's one thing to dream about it, but quite another... when you have to do it with your own hands." But in writing the Requiem (along with the intense need to write for the opera in order to bring money into the house to pay large debts) Mozart begins a slow journey into insanity, ill-health, drunkenness, and even estrangement from his wife.
After the premiere of The Magic Flute, we see Mozart collapse. Upon being returned to his home with Salieri's assistance, he seizes the opportunity to push him over the edge... he 'delivers' the message to Mozart that the Requiem must be completed... tonight... and thus begins a scene which is perhaps one of the most spiritual in all of cinema: Salieri receives the dictation of music for the Confutatis, a section of the foreboding liturgical sequence, Dies Irae:
Latin
English (in poetic
translation)
Confutatis
maledictis, Flammis
acribus addictis: Voca
me cum benedictis.
The
wicked are confounded, Doomed
to flames unbounded: Call
me with thy saints surrounded.
Oro
supplex et acclinis, Cor
contritium quasi cinis Gere
curam mei finis
Low
I kneel in submission, Like
ashes is my heart’s contrition; Help
me in my last condition.
Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of "All Souls, Amadeus, and Antonio Salieri, the 'Patron Saint of Mediocrities Everywhere'."
A sequence was prescribed for this morning's Mass, the Veni Sancte Spiritus (not to be confused with the Veni Creator Spiritus). Hopefully you heard something remotely like this (at least in word and thought) between the second reading and the Gospel:
Or for those looking for a more, ahem, robust version:
One of my favorite versions from when I was back in the music business is the Veni Sancte Spiritus by Michael M. Birkley, GIA (GI.G-4779), 1999. Sorry, GIA has not seen fit to put a good preview on the internet... you are missing out on the real beauty and fire of this arrangement with the mere 30 seconds and two pages that are out there...
As part of the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper, the Church classically prescribes the chant, Ubi Caritas (Where Charity and Love Prevail). In the 1962 missal as an antiphon for the Washing of the Feet, in the current ritual it appears as the lyrics for the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist (the "offertory procession", I suppose you would call it.) While "another appropriate chant" may be sung, Ubi Caritas is the priviledged music intended to join the action of the Mandatum to that of the Eucharist and in doing so, amplify the love called forth from both. The chant originates from sometime in the first millennium.
The lyrics harken to the idea that 'wherever two or more are gathered in my name I am there in your midst' (Matt 18:20), and speak of the peace which the Christian community is to have at the celebration of the Eucharist. For when the community is truly bound in mutual love and respect as they celebrate the mysteries of salvation, then God is truly present there and the light of his face shines upon the entire Church. There is no evil, not even the darkness of Good Friday itself, that can quench the love of those washed by Christ and fed by his Eucharist as they go out, living his example of service and sacrifice for others.
Here are the liturgical texts prescribed, in bold for the Missal of 1962, and in italics for the English MR-3. (Note that the English is pretty good, but not suitable as a line-for-line translation of the Latin.)
R:/ Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
R:/ Where true charity is dwelling, God is present there.
V:/ Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
V:/ By the loveof Christ we have been brought together.
V:/ Exsultemus et in ipso iucundemur.
V:/ let us find in hum our gladness and our pleasure;
V:/ Timeamus et amemus Deum vivum.
V:/ may we love him and revere him, God the living,
V:/ Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
V:/ and in love respect each other with sincere hearts.
R:/ Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
R:/ Where true charity is dwelling, God is present there.
V:/ Simul ergo com in unum congregamur:
V:/ So when we as one are gathered all together,
V:/ Ne nos mente dividamur, caveamus
V:/ let us strive to keep our minds free of division;
V:/ Cessent iurgia maligna, cessent lites.
V:/ may there be an end to malace, strife, and quarrels,
V:/ Et in medio nostri sit Christus Deus.
V:/ and let Christ our God be dwelling here among us.
R:/ Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
R:/ Where true charity is dwelling, God is present there.
V:/ Simul quoque cum beatis videamus.
V:/ May your face thus be our vision, bright in glory,
V:/ Glorianter vultum tuum, Christe Deus:
V:/ Christ our God, with all the blessed saints in heaven:
V:/ Gaudium, quod est immensum atque probum.
V:/ such delight is pure and faultess, joy unbounded,
V:/ Saecula per infinita saeculorum. Amen.
V:/ which endures through countless ages world without end. Amen.
Maurice Durufle
One of the great arrangements, based on the Gregorian melody, is the Durufle (1901-1986) Ubi Caritas, which is part of his Quatre motets sur des themes gregorien, Op. 10 (1960). Durufle is one of the great French organists of the 20th century, who has a modest, but wonderful catalog of works that obviously flow from a deep engagement with the Gregorian melodies handed down from the liturgical life of the Church. (If you haven't ever heard it, make sure to go onto iTunes or Amazon tonight and get the English Chamber Orchestra recording conducted by Matthew Best (1992) of the Durufle Requiem... as a bonus this recording also includes the Four Motets. The Telarc recording is decent as well, and as a bonus includes the Faure Requiem.) Scored for six voices, and of moderate difficulty for a good church choir, the Durufle Ubi Caritas it includes the antiphon and the first four versicles, above.
Enjoy this YouTube entry, featuring Durufle's arrangement of the great chant for Holy Thursday: Ubi Caritas.
Adoramus te, Christe et benedicimus tibi, quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum. [Qui passus es pro nobis, Domine, Domine, miserere nobis.]
We adore you, O Christ,
and we bless you,
who by your holy Cross
has redeemed the world.
[He who suffered death for us, O Lord,
O Lord have mercy on us.]
Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness
According to the multitude of Thy mercies do away mine offences.
Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me.
Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged.
Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me.
But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.
Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.
Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
O give me the comfort of Thy help again: and stablish me with Thy free Spirit.
Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.
Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou that art the God of my health: and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness.
Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord: and my mouth shall shew Thy praise.
For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.
O be favourable and gracious unto Sion: build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young calves upon Thine altar.
