Psalms Archives - Page 28 of 32

Different sorts of psalm

The psalm for Thirtieth Sunday in Year A is a love song; the psalm for Thirtyfirst Sunday Year A is a lullaby. I have been thinking about the similarities, and then I came across a reference by Sally Emerson to lullabies as ‘love songs to babies’, so it’s not just me, and I decided to explore the idea. All lullabies are love songs, but not all love songs are lullabies.

I’ve said before that the Book of Psalms is a book of infinite riches, so it’s not surprising that we find both love songs and lullabies there. There are lots of different sorts of love songs: bellicose, triumphant, wistful, relieved, celebratory. Most of the Hurrah for God psalms are different sorts of love songs. Lullabies in the Psalms are rarer (mostly male poets, perhaps?). Psalm 130/131 is perhaps the best example of psalm words clearly needing a lullaby setting, picking up the central image of the sleepy child, but there are others. And now the Pope too has admitted that he sometimes drops off to sleep while in God’s arms, which I am delighted to hear. The US version of Psalm 18 for 30 OTA gave me enough room to allow a lullaby setting, whereas the UK/OZ version (Ps 17) seems more wakeful, even fierce, runs the words into longer verses and does not have the restful feel, so I had to handle it differently. But for 31 OTA, everybody needs a lullaby.

Characteristics of lullabies

So what makes a lullaby a lullaby? Usually but not always in 3/4 time, sometimes 6/8, they mustn’t go too fast, and it’s clear when you sing them that this is because it gives a rocking movement, either just mentally or to the real baby in your arms. (The surprising thing about the Rocking Carol ‘Little Jesus, sweetly sleep’ (Hajej, nynej) is how jerky it is; it’s in 4/4, and I’m always reminded of small children trying to rock dollies and not quite getting it right! As a children’s carol, that’s probably a useful association.) But you can get away with 4/4 if you sing it sufficiently fast and smoothly to be beating one in a bar (Sleep baby sleep, Coventry carol).

Some golden oldies

Most classic lullabies are 3/4; Golden slumbers (not the Beatles version, the lovely tune recycled by John Gay in the Beggar’s Opera), Sweet and Low, Brahms’ Cradle song, Feed the birds in Mary Poppins, Hushabye Mountain in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was very difficult to find acceptable versions of these to link to (you should have heard the ones I left out), but there’s vast amounts of stuff on YouTube, although the best lullabies are the ones you sing yourself. To go back to films, the worst indictment of Mr Brown in Nanny McPhee is not just that he’s stopped reading stories to the children, they aren’t getting lullabies either (even if they are, oddly, pronouncing it loolaby).

Lost lullabies

But of course the ones we know about are only the tip of the iceberg as most lullabies in the world probably aren’t written down. This tends to be (certainly traditionally has been) women’s words and music, and so, ephemeral and transmitted by oral tradition, rather than by book. So any generalisations are tentative, but I think the 3/4 rocking movement is a fairly safe one (though having said that, I keep thinking of 4/4s. Never mind.)

Purpose of lullabies

What are lullabies for? They are to encourage your beloved child to go to sleep. So they need to be steady, reassuring, comfortable and soothing; not exciting, not sudden, not musically athletic, not scary (don’t sing ‘I’m going on a bear hunt’ as a lullaby). Your aim is a gentle boring to sleep. (It took us a while to work this out, as it’s very engaging to have an awake baby even in the night, but once we had missed enough sleep, we went for boredom rather than entertainment, and it was a breakthrough.)

This is the feel you are aiming at, but it’s one of those musical paradoxes, like writing a tune for Chaos (Hadyn’s Creation), infinite space (Holst’s Planets), heaven and the Beatific Vision (Elgar’s Gerontius, Palestrina Sicut cervus). You know you can’t do it, but you try. I’m sure even geniuses as above quailed at the challenge, whereas for a simple tune writer……The music I’m offering is trying to express peace, and moving towards silence and stillness.

Lullaby or sea shanty

This is difficult, especially in a Responsorial Psalm format, with the chorus coming back in again repeatedly. Lullabies don’t usually have choruses, for obvious reasons, but they do use repetition. The tune matters, but it can’t be showy or too upbeat; a little bit fey, modal or folky seems to work. Lullabies are by their nature unaccompanied, so again, not much on the instrument front. You need to be able to sing them almost under your breath, let them tail away, fade to nothing as the eyelashes close…….but pick up again gently if needed.

Words for lullabies, good and bad

The tune is important, not so much the melody for once but the movement of it; the words are not so important (you have to be able to fade to a hum). I have the psalm words as a given, so I don’t need to worry about the words, but it’s fun to read traditional lullaby words from different cultures.

So long as the tune is steady, an aggravated parent can let off steam with the words (and if you are really sleep-deprived, and garble or forget them, it doesn’t matter). Rock a bye baby is a fine traditional example of this, with total catastrophe at the end tied to a serene tune, although there are modern bowdlerised versions. There’s another one, Go to sleep you little baby, in O Brother, where art thou? One I like is Icelandic, I think, and the letting off steam line is ‘Sleep, you black-eyed pig. Fall into a pit full of ghosts.’ Now there’s a singer longing for oblivion and just marking time till she gets there. Thomas Hood wrote his Serenade for a father in precisely this situation, and it contains the line, ‘The more I sing, the more you wake’, which is precisely not what we want here.

Setting a lullaby psalm : practical considerations

We can’t have the congregation nodding off during the readings, so I am not trying for a real lullaby here, just something suggestive of it. Luckily it’s a clear and understood brand. I was amazed to discover how many pop songs are based on lullabies, and that is one reason why it was so difficult to find clips for my earlier references.

Psalm 130/131 is short and irregular, with a final half-verse. I couldn’t go for 3/4 in the UK version because of the rhythm of the Response words, so I was aiming more for a Tallis feel there, a simple metrical psalm with a stepping bass; and the half-verse fitted smoothly into the second half of the verse tune, so that worked. The OZ/CAN version had a gentle rock, with a long wait on the note for peace which I deliberately left as simple and calm as possible. I could streamline the tune around the half-verse using all four lines but more simply, as though it was easing away. The US version was tricky, because the words are a bit Yoda, except for the Response, which has the same beautiful words as the OZ/CAN version, but a different tune. This time the half-verse fitted into the first and last lines, so I ended up doing it differently for each group, but each version keeps it clear for the congregation, which is my main concern.

Responsorial psalm as a lullaby

So if you don’t want the congregation to go to sleep, why set the psalm as a lullaby? Especially for Psalm 130/131, the words are so strongly suggestive that it seems the only sort of tune to write. Nobody sings you lullabies any more once you get big, but everyone remembers the feeling of being totally safe and close to the person you love most, and being able to let go. I hope the congregation won’t go to sleep, but I hope they will feel calm, rested and peaceful; like a weaned child on its mother’s breast (or lap, for the US) indeed. It is hard to think of a more peaceful image of us and God.

© Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2017. 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.

One of the benefits of a fine early autumn is some beautiful sunsets. They are often better than summer sunsets, and this is because they include clouds. I have been a (very proud) member of the Cloud Appreciation Society since 2008, which, given that it takes me ages to get round to joining anything on-line, means that I have been admiring and enjoying clouds for a long time. They are dynamic; they are infinitely various; you cannot encompass them, but you can create one if you are really lucky and gifted. They are silent, but they look as though they are creating waves of sound.

cloud patterns by the sea — Surging chords above a steady bass

We can categorise them, but we keep having to find new terminology, because of their variety; we added a new one only this year. The one thing we can say with certainty about them is that they are beautiful. Even a seemingly uniform layer of grey stratus cloud turns out to have amazing potential when underlit by a setting sun (see below).

Pictures of God

If you want to paint God, and not only in the Western artistic tradition, you tend to picture him surrounded by, or resting upon clouds. It is the clouds which indicate that it is God, not just an old man. They are the symbol of divinity (because of course, we have no idea what God looks like). It’s partly because clouds are above us (unless we go up a high mountain or in an aeroplane), so you have the whole idea of aspiration, for reaching for something higher than ourselves. Clouds are one of God’s most frequent accompaniments in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, his natural element once the gates of Paradise are shut.

Old Testament clouds

‘Clouds and darkness are his raiment’ is from Psalm 96, and it is a thrilling description of God. There are lots of clouds in the Old Testament, sometimes as tools of God (the cloudy pillar in Exodus, the screen in Egypt Ps 104.39, the ‘little cloud […] like a man’s hand’ 1 Kings 18, which turns so quickly into a skyful of louring cloud and torrential rain), but mostly there to veil the Lord from human sight. Simply the cloud itself can represent God: ‘the cloud filled the house of the Lord […] the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord’, 1 Kings 8.11.

Moses finding God in a cloud

God appears to Moses ‘in a dense cloud’ (Exodus 19.10), he calls to Moses ‘from inside the cloud’ (Ex 24.16), and Moses’ authority is established beyond question when he goes up and into the cloud to be with God (24.18). One of the things that strikes me about this narrative is how disoriented Moses must then have been. If you climb (or usually nowadays, for most of us, fly) into a cloud, you lose all your reference points. There is no up, no down, no where from, no where to. There is only presence and there is now. This is the only place to meet God. This is completely different from Adam and Eve’s easy relationship with God when he walks in the garden in the cool of the day. After the Fall, when God is present, he is usually veiled in a cloud, and this continues in the New Testament.

New Testament clouds

The Holy Spirit overshadows Our Lady and she conceives Jesus. God’s voice comes out of the cloud when he is baptised by John. At the Transfiguration there is a ‘bright cloud’ with God’s voice. Clouds mean God’s presence, mean heaven; and the disciples’ hearts must have sunk when they saw Jesus disappear into the cloud at the Ascension, because instead of the cloud being above or around all of them, it now divided him from them. And of course, they would have known about the prophecies in Daniel (the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven) even though the similar clouds in Revelation had not been written about yet.

stacked different clouds — So much room among the clouds

Clouds in the Psalms

The clouds in the psalms are a bit different, because they are not just symbols of God’s greatness, but real observed clouds, which make the psalmist think about God. God rides on the clouds (Ps 67). He answers, concealed in the storm cloud (Ps 80). Clouds and darkness are his raiment, as we’ve already seen. He makes the clouds his chariot (Ps 103; I hope this is the psalmist recycling the Helios and Phaethon myth, because I’ve always loved it, but I have to admit I don’t have any grounds for that!). Some of the references just seem like exuberant appreciation of natural phenomena: he summons clouds from the ends of the earth…..from his treasuries he sends forth the wind (and there’s Aeolus with only a bagful) Ps 134. He calls the stars by their names and covers the heavens with clouds (Ps 146).

Real clouds

These clouds bring rain, seen as a blessing (Ps 83; cf. the Irish superstition that every drop of rain that falls on a wedding brings a blessing, just as well, really); they make shade, which is both respite and refuge (Pss 62, 120). But they aren’t only real clouds, as there is a rather nice version of the pathetic fallacy here, long before the Romantics : when God is angry, he conceals himself in a dark cloud, a black cloud (Ps 17), a storm cloud (Ps 80); the clouds that take people to heaven or bring them back down again are white. Darkness is as effective as clouds as a covering (that’s why we can only see clouds at night if they are noctilucent), so God can use either or both. Clouds bring a dynamism to our idea of the Almighty. When he walks upon the wings of the wind (Ps 103), I imagine him like a power skater with each foot on a blade of cloud (Ps 17: ‘a black cloud under his feet [..] he flew on the wings of the wind’), like one of those skaters in the park that you need to get out of the way of, as Ps 67 warns: ‘Make a highway for him who rides on the clouds’. Riding on the clouds is exciting.

Other weather events

I was surprised to find that there are more earthquakes and storms associated with God in the Psalms than there are clouds, but I think this is because we do tend to take clouds for granted except when their beauty catches us unawares. Obviously if you are calling for God to come and sort out your enemies, you are hoping for earthquakes and tempests as being more destructive and certainly more showy. But when Elijah goes to meet God, first there is a mighty wind, then an earthquake, then fire, and the Lord is not in any of them. He is a still small voice, or a gentle breeze (choose your translation). When you are the Almighty, you don’t need to shout, you just be. I am who am.

Like the clouds. They are just there, raising our hearts because we look up to see them. If you are ever feeling at all down, go to the Cloud Appreciation Society , click on the gallery of photographs, start the slideshow and just watch. Artists try to paint cloud and rarely succeed. God does it every day.

Category: Psalms

Love songs and lullabies (and some old films)