Today is the first of the Advent Ember Days, long designated as fast days, an ancient practice indeed in the Roman liturgy.
As a result, today's responsory, the first for Ember Wednesday, Clama in fortitudine, is one of the lucky few to have made into the 1895 Liber Responsorialis, and so is actually (occasionally at least) still sung in Benedictine monasteries.
O thou that tellest good tidings to Sion
Here is the text of the responsory, and a translation of it:
R. Clama / in fortitúdine, qui annúntias pacem in Ierúsalem: * Dic civitátibus Iudæ, et habitatóribus Sion: † Ecce Deus noster, quem exspectábimus, advéniet. V. Supra montem excélsum ascénde tu, qui evangelízas Sion, † exálta in fortitúdine vocem tuam. R. Dic civitátibus Iudæ, et habitatóribus Sion: Ecce Deus noster, quem exspectábimus, advéniet. | R. Cry out with strength, you who announce peace to Jerusalem:* Say to the cities of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Behold, our God will come, for whom we waited. V. Get thee up upon a high mountain, thou that bringest good tidings to Sion: lift up thy voice with strength. R. Say unto the cities of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Behold, our God will come, for whom we waited. |
The text is based on Isaiah, which has been the book of the Bible read in Advent as far back as the evidence for Matins in Rome. The particular text for today's responsory comes from chapter 40 and was also used by Handel in the Messiah for several arias and recitatives, including one based on the this text, O though that tellest good tidings to Sion. Here are the relevant verses from Isaiah in their broader context:
Isaiah 40: 5-10 - The voice of one, saying: Cry. And I said: What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field. The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen, because the spirit of the Lord hath blown upon it. Indeed the people is grass: The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen: but the word of our Lord endureth for ever. thou that bringest good tidings to Jerusalem: lift it up, fear not. Say to the cities of Juda: Behold your God: Behold the Lord God shall come with strength, and his arm shall rule: Behold his reward is with him and his work is before him.
Vox dicentis : Clama. Et dixi : Quid clamabo? Omnis caro foenum, et omnis gloria ejus quasi flos agri. Exsiccatum est foenum, et cecidit flos, quia spiritus Domini sufflavit in eo. Vere foenum est populus; exsiccatum est foenum, et cecidit flos; verbum autem Domini nostri manet in aeternum. Super montem excelsum ascende, tu qui evangelizas Sion; exalta in fortitudine vocem tuam, qui evangelizas Jerusalem; exalta, noli timere. Dic civitatibus Juda : Ecce Deus vester: ecce Dominus Deus in fortitudine veniet, et brachium ejus dominabitur, ecce merces ejus cum eo, et opus illius coram illo.
Singing of the psalms in the Office and the responsories
Continuing on, now on the history and context of the responsories, in my last post on the history of the responsories, I pointed to some evidence for mid-fifth century Gallican responsory production, which arguably involved both the Mass and the Office. I want to say a little more on that today.
As I noted earlier in the series, one of the theories for the origins of responsories relates to the move from responsorial singing to antiphonal.
The claim is that when psalm refrains were no longer needed due to the shift to antiphonal performance of the psalms, they were repurposed as mass propers, and Office responsories.
Leaving aside the issue of how well fits (or rather does not fit) with our understanding of the evolution of the Mass propers, I want to suggest that there is no evidence at all for the proposition that there was some huge repertoire of refrains that were suddenly made redundant and looking for a home in the fifth century.
Antiphons
First, if there had been a switch from congregational singing to antiphonal, the most obvious 'repurposing' would surely have been to use the refrains as antiphons in the modern sense of a short musical composition used at the beginning and/or end of a psalms.
The early history of antiphons (including whether they existed at all) is (naturally) highly contested, but the Rule of St Benedict makes pretty clear references to them in way that is entirely consistent with their use in the way we know them.
Moreover some have, for example proposed (albeit without much evidence to support the idea) that antiphons were originally repeated at regular intervals throughout a psalm, much in the way that the refrain was used in responsorial psalmody.
Solo psalm performance in the early Office
More fundamentally though, most responsorial singing of the psalms almost certainly originally happened in the context of the Mass, not the Office - or at least not in the monastic Office.
The earliest evidence we have on how the psalms were performed in the monastic Office comes from Cassian and Rufinus for Egypt, both of whom suggest that the psalms were generally sung by one person, with the rest listening in silence except to join in a doxology or other form of response at the end of the psalm (such as a prayer).
That approach (or variants on it) continued to be used in many places including Gaul and Celtic influenced monasteries well into the eighth century.
The Benedictine Office
In Rome though, or at least in the Rule of St Benedict, it is pretty clear that the use of two alternating choirs was the norm. While the Rule itself is arguably ambiguous on this subject, the slightly later Italian Rule of Stephen and Paul (which was clearly influenced by the Rule of St Benedict) makes it quite clear that one singer intones the psalms, then others join in.
The two verse doxology we still use for the psalms was almost certainly introduced in Rome by at least the early sixth century precisely to reflect this style of singing (the older version had only one verse).
And one of the distinctive features of Roman psalmody following its introduction to Anglo-Saxon England was seen as precisely this choral style of performance.
The shift to antiphony
Moreover, in the context of the Mass, the Liber Pontificalis attributes the shift to antiphonal psalmody to Pope Celestine (422- 432). But it also states that he decreed that the psalms should be performed antiphonally by everyone, in explicit contrast to the Epistle and Gospel.
The shift to a more elaborate style of melody suitable for performance by a specialist singer then, was a later development, likely not a direct consequence of the shift away from responsorial psalmody.
Where then, did the responsories come from? I will come back to this question in due course!
No comments:
Post a Comment