Saint Michael the Archangel: An Antiphon and A Hymn

According to the Ordo of the Roman Missal of 1962, today we celebrate The Dedication of the Archangel Michael, referring to a basilica in Rome dedicated by Pope Saint Boniface IV in 610. In the current calendar for the Roman Rite we celebrate the three Archangels, Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, named in scripture as God's special messengers. 

Michaelmas, September 29, is one of the quarter days, an important date for paying debts, hiring servants, etc. More about the feast here.

The Antiphon for the Lauds (Morning Prayer) of Michaelmas describes the "war in heaven" recounted in the Book of Revelation ("Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it." Revelation 12:7–9):

Factum est silentium in caelo,
Dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele Archangelo.

Audita est vox millia millium dicentium:
Salus, honor et virtus omnipotenti Deo.
Millia millium minestrabant ei et decies centena millia assistebant ei.
[Alleluia.]

There was silence in heaven
When the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael.

The voice of a thousand thousand was heard saying:
Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.
A thousand thousand ministered to him and ten hundreds of thousands stood before him.
[Alleluia.]

Richard Dering, a Catholic convert and exile from England, offers this setting of the antiphon, sung by the Choir of Clare College. As another record label, Hyperion, describes Dering and this work, which is the Antiphon for the Benedictus canticle during the Lauds of Michaelmas:

Dering was, like Philips, an English Catholic musician who went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands (or, according to another account, converted to Catholicism while visiting Rome in 1612). By 1617 he was organist to the convent of English nuns in Brussels, and in the same year published his first collection of Cantiones Sacrae; the publisher was the noted Phalèse of Antwerp who also published music by Philips. Factum est silentium comes from a second collection which appeared in 1618; its declamatory, dramatic style shows clearly the influence of the new Italian Baroque style which Dering’s compatriots in England were perhaps slower to embrace.

More about the Benedictine convent in Brussels Dering served here. He returned to England in 1625 to serve Queen Henrietta Maria as organist in her private Catholic chapel and also served at Court as a musician among the king's Lutes and Voices. He was buried in the Savoy Chapel, a Royal Chapel, on March 22, 1630.

Father Edward Caswall translated the hymn, Te splendor et virtus patris for use at the Birmingham Oratory during Matins and Vespers for this feast:

O Jesu! Life-spring of the soul!
The Father's power and glory bright!
Thee with the Angels we extol;
From Thee they draw their life and light.

Thy thousand thousand hosts are spread
Embattled o'er the azure sky;
But Michael bears Thy standard dread,
And lifts the mighty Cross on high.

He in that Sign the rebel powers
Did with their Dragon Prince expel;
And hurled them from the heavens’ high towers,
Down like a thunderbolt to hell.

Grant us, with Michael, still, O Lord,
Against the prince of pride to fight;
So may a crown be our reward,
Before the Lamb's pure throne of light.

To God the Father, with the Son
And Holy Paraclete, with Thee,
As evermore hath been before,
Be glory through eternity.

The Latin text is attributed to Rabanus Maurus, the ninth century Frankish Benedictine monk and theologian.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us!

Saint Gabriel, the Archangel, pray for us!

Saint Raphael, the Archangel, pray for us!

The English Reformation in Art and Music

Two packages arrived on Monday: one containing a fine used copy of of Margaret Aston's The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait and the other a newly released CD from Stile Antico, In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile.

I've listened to the CD twice and am still reading the book.

I'm familiar with the stories of most of the composers on the CD (Dowland, Byrd, Dering, Philips, White, and De Monte) and have CDs with some of the same works (Byrd's "Tristitia et anxietas" and his "Quomodo cantabimus", written in response to Philippe de Monte's "Super flumina Babylonis"; Robert White's "Lamentations a 5", etc).

Richard Dering's "Factum est silentium" was an exciting and exuberant discovery:

Factum est silentium in caelo,
Dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele Archangelo.

Audita est vox millia millium dicentium:
Salus, honor et virtus omnipotenti Deo.
Millia millium minestrabant ei et decies centena millia assistebant ei.
[Alleluia.]

There was silence in heaven
When the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael.

The voice of a thousand thousand was heard saying:
Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.
A thousand thousand ministered to him and ten hundreds of thousands stood before him.
[Alleluia.]

Here it is sung by the Choir of Clare College! As another record label, Hyperion, describes Dering and this work, which is the Antiphon for the Benedictus canticle during the Lauds of Michaelmas:

Dering was, like Philips, an English Catholic musician who went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands (or, according to another account, converted to Catholicism while visiting Rome in 1612). By 1617 he was organist to the convent of English nuns in Brussels, and in the same year published his first collection of Cantiones Sacrae; the publisher was the noted Phalèse of Antwerp who also published music by Philips. Factum est silentium comes from a second collection which appeared in 1618; its declamatory, dramatic style shows clearly the influence of the new Italian Baroque style which Dering’s compatriots in England were perhaps slower to embrace.

The new work on the CD, a setting of Shakespeare's poem, "The Phoenix and The Turtle", underwhelmed me. The words were lost in the music of Huw Watkins. The liner notes explain that he "portrays the busy hustle and bustle of funeral preparations, before a slower sublime setting of the concluding threnody." "Busy hustle and bustle of funeral preparations"? I don't hear that in the poem's opening:

Let the bird of loudest lay 

On the sole Arabian tree 

Herald sad and trumpet be, 

To whose sound chaste wings obey. 

But thou shrieking harbinger, 

Foul precurrer of the fiend, 

Augur of the fever's end, 

To this troop come thou not near. 

From this session interdict 

Every fowl of tyrant wing, 

Save the eagle, feather'd king; 

Keep the obsequy so strict. 

Let the priest in surplice white, 

That defunctive music can, 

Be the death-divining swan, 

Lest the requiem lack his right. 

And thou treble-dated crow, 

That thy sable gender mak'st 

With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 

'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. . . .

This sounds more directions first for who should not attend the funeral and then who should, not running around making arrangements! The notes do mention the theory that Shakespeare is paying tribute to St. Anne Line and her exiled husband Roger.

More on Aston's study of the meaning and date of "King Edward VI and the Pope" which is in the National Portrait Gallery in London after I've finished reading the book.

The 17th Century War Against Christmas

Anna Mitchell and I will talk about the 17th century war against Christmas this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live here and note that Anna will re-air the interview during an EWTN hour of the show, probably tomorrow.

We'll base our discussion on the article I wrote for the National Catholic Register, but I am also interested in this CD from Resonus Classics, A Cavalier Christmas. The Ebor Singers and the Chelys Consort of Viols, conducted by Paul Gameson, perform music by Gibbons, Byrd, Richard Dering, William and Henry Lawes, and George Jeffreys, and others. The liner notes prove my point:

The English Civil War was one of the most turbulent periods of English history, as king and parliament wrestled for influence over the other: the consequences destabilised and eventually redefined the country’s political, social and religious landscape. During the early days of the Civil War, the Puritan-influenced parliament sought to abolish holy days, and in particular Christmas Day, ‘the Old heathen’s Feasting Day in honour of Saturn their Idol-God, the Papist’s Massing Day, the True Christian Man’s Fasting Day’. By contrast, first in London and then at his war-torn court in Oxford, Charles I continued to celebrate Christmas in style, assembling the best musicians and poets to provide entertainment alongside other festivities. Royalist poets, including Richard Herrick, wrote Christmas odes that were performed before the King at Oxford.

According to this website, Charles I and Oliver Cromwell both liked the music of Richard Dering, in spite of the fact that he was a "Papist":

Richard Dering was, like Peter Philips, an expatriate English musician who because of his Roman Catholic faith, lived and worked in the Spanish-dominated South Netherlands. Dering, a generation younger than Philips, most likely began life as a Protestant in England and converted to the Roman Catholic faith during or after a visit to Italy in his early thirties. He was born the illegitimate son of Henry Dering of Liss, Hampshire. By 1610 he had traveled to Italy, gaining a BMus in that year from Christ Church, Oxford. 1612-16 he traveled with the British ambassador to Venice. In 1617 he was organist to the community of English Benedictine nuns in Brussels. He returned to England in 1625 as organist to the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria and 'musician for the lutes and voices' to King Charles I.

Dering wrote three books of motets with continuo, two of canzonets and one of continuo madrigals, and is represented in many MSS and anthologies. His music shows varying degrees of Italian influence; the continuo madrigals and small concertato motets are very much in the idiom of Grandi or d'India, with wayward modulations and dramatic expression; the Cantio Sacra (1618) contains 6-part motets that recall a more conventionally expressive Italian madrigal-like idiom.

Dering's music must have had a wide appeal, for much of it was brought out by the enterprising Antwerp publisher Pierre Phalèse between 1612 and 1628. Dering's two- and three-voice pieces were published in London by John Playford in 1662, long after the composer's death, but they may have been written in the Spanish Netherlands, for one has a text honoring St James as patron saint of Spain. It is likely that Dering took the pieces with him to England: they were certainly sung in Henrietta's chapel, and they were used for private devotion during the Commonwealth (when they were reputedly Oliver Cromwell's favorite music).

Here are some samples of his work, performed by the Choir of Clare College in Cambridge.