National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated in the United States from September 15 (when several Central American countries celebrate their independence from Spain) to October 15. Though at St David’s we do not sing music in Spanish or from Spanish-speaking countries only during this period, this month does provide the inspiration or occasion for some of our musical selections, ranging from chant to choral polyphony to vernacular song to newly composed music for bilingual singing.
This fall at 9:00 the chosen Song of Praise is ‘Cantad al Señor’, which appears in both Wonder, Love, and Praise and El Himnario, two of the Episcopal Church’s resources for congregational music. Originating in Brazil (the original Portuguese text beginning ‘Cantai ao Senhor’), this song, whose text consists of themes found throughout Holy Scripture, has circulated widely in Spanish translation. Its intuitive melody and repetitive text make it easy to learn even for those with little or no Spanish. The English translation follows:
1. Sing to the Lord a new song.
2. He is the creator and master of all.
3. Sing to Jesus, for he is worthy.
4. It is he who gave us his Holy Spirit.
5. Sing to the Lord, Amen! Alleluia!
At 11:15 for the rest of the fall we will sing a bilingual Sanctus I wrote for this occasion two years ago. The Spanish and English texts can be sung simultaneously, but this year I have completely recast the accompaniment with the melody appearing in canon at the octave (i.e. like a round), which will allow the two languages to be sung together in a slightly different way: perhaps an echo of the heavenly beings calling to one another, ‘Holy, holy, holy...’, as we read in Isaiah and the Revelation to John. We also sing the Our Father to its traditional chant, which I adapted last year to the Spanish-language version in the Libro de Oración Común (just as the same chant has been adapted for the English text: the setting we have been singing in recent weeks).*
Iberia and Latin America have a rich tradition of liturgical music, from which we draw from time to time for our choir’s repertory (as we just did on Holy Cross Day, which included a motet by Spanish composer Juan Bautista Comes). Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548–1611) was one of the foremost composers of the late Renaissance, working as organist, singer, maestro de capilla, and composer both in Rome and in his native Spain. Among his many settings of hymns for the Daily Office, consisting of polyphonic verses to be sung in alternation with chanted verses, is a setting of the Corpus Christi hymn ‘Pange lingua’ [329]. Our Communion anthem this week comprises the last two stanzas (beginning ‘Tantum ergo sacramentum’ [330], very often extracted from the whole hymn and sung at Communion or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament), the first sung to its plainsong melody as it appears in Victoria’s printed collection, and the second sung to Victoria’s music.
Another hymn for Corpus Christi, ‘Adoro devote’ [314], appears as our Communion hymn this week. Both of these hymns and the rest of the liturgy for Corpus Christi (the feast of the Body of Christ, traditionally celebrated the Thursday after Trinity Sunday in honor of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist) are attributed to St Thomas Aquinas, who in the early 1260s revised slightly earlier rites that ultimately stem from the work of one Juliana of Liège, who had campaigned for many years for the institution of such a feast. One of the main themes of these texts is the inability of our physical senses to perceive the sacramental Presence of Christ and the requirement therefore of faith. See also ‘O salutaris hostia’ [311], the similarly often extracted conclusion of ‘Verbum supernum prodiens’, and ‘Lauda Sion salvatorem’ [320], the Sequence for Corpus Christi, for other hymns for this feast also attributed to Aquinas.
*For this work of chant adaptation I am indebted to a dissertation study by John Boe, who as it happens was my predecessor as Organist & Choirmaster of St David’s, 1953–1960.
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