Psalms Archives - Page 13 of 32

When is a psalm not a psalm? When it’s from Daniel

Coming up shortly, the Daniel Canticle

Trinity Sunday, though a major feast, does not have the same readings every year (unlike Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter). Some feasts are inconsistent (Pentecost Vigil has the same readings every year, but the Day Mass varies according to which year it is). This sort of thing is nerdy but crucial for me and Volmar the Vebmeister; we check obsessively so that you can trust what’s on the website (and we are very sorry when we get it wrong). Sometimes the readings change but not the Psalm, sometimes vice versa; I think it’s a question of how many excellent readings there are on a given feast, which it is desirable to fit in.

Trinity Sunday psalms

So Trinity Sunday, being one of the most ineffable feasts, has three full sets of readings, and three different psalms. Year B has Psalm 32/33, Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own, and Year C the beautiful Psalm 8, O Lord our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth. Both psalms are about the wonders of Creation and man’s stewardship. But Year A, our current year, is different. The Responsorial Psalm is not even out of the Book of Psalms, it is a Canticle out of the Book of the prophet Daniel.

A Canticle in litany form

The Daniel Canticle is different in its form from our usual Responsorial psalms. It is a litany, where short lines alternate with a repeated refrain. Most people have come across litanies to Our Lady, with the response ‘Pray for us’ after each of her titles, and litanies of lists of saints which work the same way. It is easy to sing or say litanies antiphonally, because they divide so clearly. The UK/Eire and OZ Lectionaries have preserved its form as a litany, and unlike other litanies in the Psalter (Pss 116/117, 135/136), where the shape tends to be adjusted to resemble verse and chorus psalms (like Pss 45/46, 66/67), here the Response is made by the litany words cutting in after every line. So it’s different from our usual Sunday shape, but it is really effective (for one of my cantors, this is her favourite one to sing). The US and the CAN versions have been regularised, to make it look more like the standard Responsorial Psalm, and consequently easier for the congregation, presumably. The CAN version works because all the stanzas have been kept brief enough to keep the rhythm going. The US version has differing stanza lengths, which would have made it impossible to treat as a litany, because the rhythm is broken up.

a bit of rhythm makes the ship easier to handle

Litanies of the sea : shanties

What sort of song has alternating lines with a caller and a chorus? Sea shanties, that’s what. I love sea shanties. They are work songs, for a task where everyone needs to work together and in synch, like hauling up an anchor, hoisting a sail, turning a capstan or similar. It doesn’t have to be maritime, but that seems to be where this style originated. The song helps to keep the rhythm steady, the singing together keeps everyone invested, and the caller can use the traditional words or improvise and alter as he or she chooses, so long as the rhythm is the same. One of my favourites, and an absolute classic, is Old Billy Riley. Liturgy is only a different sort of work, so sea shanties are entirely appropriate. I was fascinated to discover that R. R. Terry, the Victorian Catholic convert, musicologist and for a long time choir director at Westminster Cathedral, published The Shanty Book, Part 1, Sailor Shanties, which you can read or download at Project Gutenberg. He was also at least partly responsible for the revival of Tudor Church music. He seems to have been a very complicated man about whom the details are surprisingly sketchy for the date, but we definitely share some interests.

The Book of Daniel

inside the fiery furnace, from a fresco in the catacombs

The Daniel Canticle comes from the third chapter of the Book of Daniel, and it is part of the song of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. The Book of Daniel is absolutely bizarre in many ways, written about 160 B.C., during a persecution and before the Maccabean revolt. It’s the last book of messianic prophecy before the New Testament, though it doesn’t look like it because the minor prophets (which are historically older) are usually printed in a group after it, because they are all short. Daniel is filed in with ‘Major prophets’.

Daniel, an early vegan

Daniel is one of a group of young Jewish captives, selected to be servants of King Nebuchadnezzar. They are given new non-Jewish names, and they are to be trained and educated for three years, and fed from the king’s own table. But Daniel is worried about observing Jewish food laws, so he asks the chief eunuch to allow him not to eat the food provided. The chief eunuch is a kind man, so he explains that if Daniel and his three friends look thinner than the other boys, the king will be angry (and probably kill the chief eunuch). Daniel, possibly one of the first vegans in Western literature, offers the chief eunuch a deal : for ten days, Daniel and his companions will eat only vegetables and drink water, and then the chief eunuch can compare their looks with those of the other boys still eating from the king’s table. Daniel and the boys (of course) look better and are in better health than the others after the ten days, so they are allowed to continue, and when their training is over, Nebuchadnezzar chooses them out of the bigger group as his favoured servants because they are better and wiser in every way…..and Daniel can interpret dreams, as Joseph did, long ago.

Disaster strikes…

The story continues, with Nebuchadnezzar having dreams and killing all the other sages and diviners, who cannot help him because he cunningly demands that they first tell him his dream and then interpret it. (Daniel can do this, because God tells him the answers.) Nebuchadnezzar is a classic bad king, violent, rash and arrogant. He erects a statue to be worshipped whenever ‘horn, pipe, lyre,trigon, harp, bagpipe or any other instrument’ is heard. (This list of instruments is given, like an incantation, four times.)

The fiery furnace

here is the statue (in very fetching spotted pyjamas) with everyone else worshipping it, and the furnace below, with the angel protecting Daniel’s friends

This is in the province of Babylon, where Daniel’s three friends are governing on the king’s behalf, while Daniel stays behind at court. The three friends refuse to worship the statue, and Nebuchadnezzar orders the fiery furnace to be made seven times hotter than usual, and the three youths to be cast into it. The men who throw them in are burnt up just by approaching, but Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego walk around in the flames unscathed, praising God and praying. First there is a long prayer from Abednego, but he’s reverted to his Jewish name, so he’s called Azariah. It is a prayer that recognises and repents the sin which has placed the Jews in captivity and under persecution (this is why his Jewish name is used, I think, because he is representing his people here), and begs God for help. It’s a very beautiful prayer, which the Church uses for Morning Prayer on Tuesday of Week 4. Several phrases in it are very familiar because they quote the psalms (‘and now with all our heart we follow you; we fear you and seek your face’ Daniel 3.41, cf Ps 26/27.8).

Even hotter than seven times hotter

The king’s surviving servants pile more fuel upon the furnace, but the angel of the Lord comes down, fans the flames outward and provides a cool wind in the centre where the young men are walking. Then they sing together (at great length), and (part of) this is our Canticle for Trinity Sunday. Daniel’s story continues, but I won’t follow it further, even though there’s a dragon and the story of Susannah, not to mention the lions. And you won’t find the great litany in a Protestant Bible, as it is officially part of the Apocrypha, though it is used liturgically in the Book of Common Prayer.

Setting it to music : UK and OZ versions

Many shanties are modal or even minor, like the folk songs they descended from, but the words of the Daniel Canticle are blissfully joyful, so there’s no need for anything except a major key. A rolling rhythm is very important. The OZ and the UK version have slightly different words (and therefore tunes) for the Response, but they work in the same way. The Response is short, but comes twice in each verse. I decided to make the two versions slightly different, so that the movement felt more satisfactory : the first Response after line 1 goes up, to keep things going, and the second after line 3 comes down to make the end of the stanza. This means that it is easy to feel where you are. It’s important to explain to your congregation how it works (or at least to those who come early enough before Mass), but it’s so simple that it takes only a couple of minutes to get across. Then printing it on the page was tricky, to make it clear. I’ve put both Responses together at the beginning, because it actually works to sing them like that, and it gives you a neat beginning and end, which can be tricky with a litany. I would sing it through, then get them to sing it, then sing the whole psalm, and repeat the double Response to finish. And do sing it with a swing! It should remind you of hauling on a rope or something like that.

CAN and US versions

I didn’t double up the Response in the CAN version, because the First Response in each stanza has been left out in their Lectionary. The lines are so short, though, that each stanza is still only four bars, and the two bar response feels like the right weight. The US version is much more wordy, with the stanza including the alternating lines of praise as well as the congregation then having a Response with the same feel but slightly different wording. The length of the stanzas varies (first one is double in length, last one has three lines), so it works like an ordinary irregular psalm, but more repetitive.

Other Canticles as psalms

There are four different Canticles which are used as Responsorial psalms : one from Exodus (the song after Pharaoh’s host has been drowned in the Red Sea), which we use at the Easter Vigil; one from Isaiah (the fountain of salvation), used at the Easter Vigil, the Baptism of the Lord and Third Sunday of Advent C; the Magnificat, surprisingly only for Third Sunday of Advent B; and this one from Daniel, used for Trinity Sunday A and also for the extended version of the Pentecost Vigil. I am sorry that we won’t get to use it this year if all our churches are still shut, because it is a wonderful expression of joy and confidence in extremely difficult circumstances! Very appropriate, then; maybe we should all just sing it to cheer ourselves up.

© Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Keefe and Music for Mass, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Holy Week without going to church

Every church is shut

One of the measures taken by a lot of different governments in the current Corona virus situation, is to close all places of assembly, including the churches. This has been difficult already, with no Sunday going-to-Mass, no adoration sessions, no popping in to touch base with the Lord. But the timing now is particularly difficult. Lent meant that the family’s stocks of biscuits and chocolate were low even before we could go shopping, because everyone had given things up; but when they are all at home all day, it’s good occasionally to provide a morale-boosting treat. Now we have reached Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. We can’t even have Stations of the Cross or the Last Supper Mass; we won’t be able to go to church on Good Friday to feel the ache of what’s missing. We have had to park the Holy Sacrament in the sanctuary a couple of weeks back, without even any ceremony; and when it comes to the Vigil or the joy of Easter morning, how joyful will we manage to feel?

Flocking to the house of the Lord in happier times

Nobody to pray with

Of course you can still pray ‘alone and in secret’, but the community part of prayer is turning out to be more important to most of us than we realised. Ekklesia (Church) is from the word which means calling out to draw together, to assemble. It is fundamental to our faith. At least we should be able to have more empathy with those Christians who have to manage like this all the time, once this is over. But I’ve been trying to think of practical alleviations for now.

New use of new technology

Masses on-line are working really well, and we are all grateful to those who have managed to provide the technology and have it function more than adequately in these difficult days. It seems only last week that our parish priest was having trouble with a single microphone, and now people are livestreaming and recording whole Masses.

..but not the complete event

We attend attentively to these Masses, but it’s a strange experience. The ones I have seen (attended? taken part in?) have been of either just a priest, or a priest and one other (either a reader, or a concelebrant). The Mass as such is there, but no congregation, and (for me, crucially) no congregational singing. One of the recorded Masses I attended had a priest who intoned the end of the Proper, and my family and I duly sang Amen, but somehow it emphasized the gap between us and what was happening on-screen rather than the opposite.

Holy Week with a mute button

So now we are facing a Holy Week with no congregational music, and I am planning ways to supply what I feel I will miss the most. I know some people will think that we should offer up our discomfort, and of course that is an option. We will all have to do that anyway, as I don’t think I will be able to compensate for what I am missing. But here are a few suggestions of music which helps us to shape and understand the words of the Holy Week liturgies. For me, and I’m sure for others, much of the effect is added by the music. I am sure these services, like our on-line Masses, will be available on-line in some form, though without live music and congregation. Even if you had a socially-distancing congregation, most non-professionals would not want to sing on their own so far away from the next voice!

Holy Week hymns not an option

Before the virus overtook all our arrangements, I was wondering about assembling a list of the best Holy Week hymns, or even hymns creating a virtual Stations of the Cross, but I’ve parked that idea for now (maybe I’ll do it next year). Hymns really are for singing yourself with a group, so I won’t be digging up favourite ones on YouTube just to listen to (though if the BBC plays me some services from past years with good singalonga hymns over the Triduum, I’ll probably join in while making my hot cross buns).

Passion music to listen to : Bach, Schütz, Stainer

The Passion reading for Palm Sunday this year is St Matthew’s, and the Good Friday one St John’s. Bach set both, quite differently. The St Matthew Passion is a work of great scale, almost lush in its sweep, and the link is to a big choir and orchestra. The St John is gentler and more intimate, and I like to listen to it with a small choir (here’s a link). In both cases, the narrative is interspersed with comments (arias and chorales), which is the way that Bach’s church did it; but both these linked recordings have subtitles, so you can follow where you are.

Heinrich Schütz (1585 – 1672) also set both the St Matthew and St John Passions, but he did it in a straight run of the narrative, and with no instrumental support. It’s simpler and more devotional, but I can’t find a subtitled version. I know the Bach much better, but I love Schütz’s Christmas music, so I’ll be listening to his Passions as well. Other listening music is the Passion part of Handel’s Messiah, which means Part 2, but without the Hallelujah Chorus at the end. Save that (and Part 3) for Easter Sunday. Something else I love dearly is Stainer’s Crucifixion, unfairly neglected by us Catholics, which I find very moving.

By the time we get to Easter Sunday, if you want joyful music, try putting ‘surrexit Christus hodie’ or ‘surrexit Christus vere’ into Google and YouTube. Baroque Czechs and Netherlanders wrote some truly beautiful music for this, exciting to listen to (and really exhilarating to sing in different times).

A modern take on the Via Crucis

One other suggestion for those of you with children at home, who want to tell the story of Holy Week. When I was teaching the First Communion class, some years ago, we did models, like little tableaux, of the crucial stages of the Passion narrative for the class coming up to Holy Week. I did it with Playmobil, but it would work just as well with Lego. You need a clearly recognisable Jesus figure, a few representative apostles, some Roman soldiers (capes and helmets), a Pilate figure with something that can double as a basin for handwashing, a Herod figure with crown, a spare crown (of thorns, or you can improvise with brown wool or even paper), and a couple of representative women. For scene setting you need a few trees and bushes, fires, a throne or two, a plate and a cup (some of the Harry Potter Lego would give you cups and fires). You need a base plate for each separate scene, just to keep it reasonably straightforward.

Set up the Last Supper; the Garden of Gethsemane; Herod’s palace, Pilate’s palace; and a green path, which will lead to Calvary. Then what I did was to tell the story slowly, moving the little figures from place to place. Spread it out over two or three tables if you can, so that everyone has to follow the journey. You can have a real crucifix at the end of the green path, and light a candle there when you reach it (put Jesus in your pocket here, because he’s on the crucifix). You can repurpose two of the apostles as the thieves for this scene, because they’ve all run away, but make sure the women are there, however peripherally, in every scene. I found the children were absolutely rapt and reverent, and it helped us all to understand exactly how the story unfolded.

The power of the cliffhanger

You stop fairly abruptly at the Crucifixion, which is entirely appropriate, and you don’t need to go into detail. Indeed, saying to the children, ‘And now we all have to wait and see what can possibly happen next’, is a good way to leave it. You could then secretly (I haven’t actually done this, because we’ve never not been able to go to church for Easter before) make one of the little Resurrection gardens that you see in Anglican churches, and leave it to be found on Easter morning with the Lord standing outside it (and Mary Magdalene looking baffled or surprised – lift up the arms on the little figure – in the garden). I think that would work, because it’s like leaving the crib empty on Christmas Eve and filled with the baby on Christmas morning.

Christ emerging from tomb — resurrexit sicut dixit

Use whatever helps, because the message is so much more important than the ways we use to tell it. Even music, though it pains me to admit it. And the Lord will himself turn our mourning into dancing, as it says in Ps 29/30, even if it is to music that we can only make when we get back to our churches.