McCreesh and Gabrieli's "The Dream of Gerontius 1900"

This latest recording of Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius features period instruments--not of the Renaissance or Romantic periods, but of the early Twentieth Century. As this review from PrestoMusic's website explains:

As with all their recordings, McCreesh and his players have made enormous effort to research the types of instruments that would likely have been used at the Birmingham premiere, from Érard harps and a Lorée oboe previously owned by celebrated oboist Léon Goossens, to piston horns and narrow-bore trombones (including Elgar's own instrument).

The differences are striking and immediately apparent: from the opening moments of the prelude where violas are doubled by clarinets and bassoons, to a few bars later where the cor anglais takes over, the subtleties of Elgar's orchestration are realised to great effect. Similarly, the brass are capable of being loud without obliterating the rest of the orchestra; the way that the horns and trombones spit out their beastly contributions to the Demon Chorus is especially satisfying.

Most beguiling of all, however, is the timbre of the strings. The extensive use of gut strings allows for a haunting transparency of sound, which pays enormous dividends at the hushed start of Part Two. . . .

And I agree with the reviewer that the moment when the Soul of Gerontius sees God for Judgment is tremendous! There's a generous playlist here. Listen to the Prelude!

The vocalists are also splendid, especially Nicky Spence as Gerontius. He doesn't seem as strained by the heldentenor passages and sensitively expresses the emotions of the more lyrical moments. Anna Stéphany can't replace Janet Baker in my memory, but is quite good. I still like Gerard Finley's Priest/Angel of the Agony from Sir Colin Davis's 2008 performance much better than this soloist (Andrew Foster-Williams). Listening to some samples from Daniel Barenboim's recording by Thomas Hampson from 2017 places him in close second place.

Please note that I purchased my copy--and it came from Australia!! The two cds from Signum Classics are packaged very nicely in a book format with an essay by Stephen Hough ("Angelical Choirs") on the religious power of Newman's poem: acknowledging that not everyone who appreciates Elgar's achievement in this work has the same Catholic faith that Newman and Hough have, but that the power of the music is faithful to that religion upon which Newman based his poem. Hough quotes a letter from Newman to Georgiana, Lady Chatterton: "As to my own Gerontius, it was not the versification which sold it, but the subject. It is a RELIGIOUS subject which appeals to the feelings of everyone." (September 18, 1870.) 

You might be interested in listening to this BBC interview with Stephen Hough in which he:

reveals how Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius helped him back into the world of classical music after suffering a breakdown while at Cheetham's School of Music, and began his conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. (at 19:03)

Hough even chose the "Proficiscere"in a 2016 BBC Dessert Island Disc episode!

Mahan Esfahani, an Iranian-American harpsichordist, wrote the essay about Elgar's composition of the work and his disappointment in its first performance and its effect on his religious faith--his Catholicism in still anti-Catholic England ("Devilish Crossings"). As Esfahani notes, Elgar took a great risk in choosing Newman's poem to set to Wagnerian music for an English/Anglican choral festival. I don't think Elgar's faith ever recovered from that failure and rejection but I hope by the Grace of God, he knows what a success it has since become.

I'd recommend this set as a great addition to your Gerontius library.

Sacred Music: St. John Henry Newman's Words and Music

I purchased and have listened to Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's new CD of various settings of St. John Henry Newman's poetry and famous meditation adapted for commissioned works:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

Harry Christophers went to a Church of England minister for a "translation" of Newman's Meditation more suited to be set to music and Christophers is most pleased that Robert Willis, the Dean of Canterbury, eliminated the use of the third person singular masculine pronoun when referring to God. So listening to the CD, one hears five different variations on the theme of Newman's Meditation, with different texts. They are all meditative, virtuosic, and inward looking. 

But Harry Christophers has programmed more traditional settings of Newman's works: Sir William Henry Harris's version of "Lead, Kindly Light", Richard Runciman Terry's of "Praise to the Holiest in the Height, and "Firmly I Believe and Truly" with a hymn tune by William Boyce (Halton Holgate). So these are works for congregations to sing, and the Sixteen sing them gloriously. 

The adapted works for Meditation mostly just glided by as I listened to them, while the three quoted hymns stand out as praise to God, declarations of faith, and thanksgiving for providence.

I've also listened twice to the recent performance of Sir Edward Elgar's setting of Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius at the Proms. Critical reception of this work, almost always from a secular publication, is always mixed: admiring Elgar's achievement, but descrying Newman's religion (what Harry Christophers refers to as his "ideology" in the Meditation CD liner notes). For example, The Guardian review has to remind us:

First performed in Birmingham town hall, Gerontius has always provoked extreme reactions, initially to its Roman Catholicism in a mostly Anglican country, now because its religiosity, with all the resonance of that word, is too much for some.

I don't think that Newman should be even indirectly accused of religiosity, with its implications of falsity and hypocrisy of excessive piety. And certainly not Elgar, who as this article from The Newman Review notes, had a very common-man view of the title character:

I imagined Gerontius to be a man like us, not a Priest or a Saint, but a sinner, a repentant one of course but still no end of a worldly man in his life, & now brought to book. Therefore I’ve not filled his part with Church tunes & rubbish but a good, healthy full-blooded romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak. It is, I imagine, much more difficult to tear one’s self away from a well to do world than from a cloister.[3]

Perhaps Elgar went a little far in his judgment of the title character, but he sees Gerontius, even in this Dream, as a real human being. I rather think Gerontius was not as worldly as Elgar thinks, as he proclaims:

Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
and through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent
And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall,
Use well the interval.

Gerontius is more aware of his condition than someone who has been "no end of a worldly man in his life"; he's been well-instructed in the Faith and believes it, even as he faces the crisis of his death.

Nevertheless, every time I listen to live or recorded performance, I appreciate how Elgar created a dramatic, almost operatic musical narrative. The deathbed sequence in the first part is filled with Gerontius' expressions of both faith and fear, as he tries to rouse himself even before he dies to declare his faith and trust in his Saviour. Elgar sets Newman's quotations from the traditional prayers for the dying with clarity, while Gerontius' fears are also sensitively set as he fades away from life. The Priest confidently send Gerontius on his way:

Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God
The Omnipotent Father, Who created thee!

And the second part, as the Soul adjusts to eternal life "temporarily" without a body, is imaginative and inspires awe. The dialog between the Soul and Angel transports the listener to the Soul's particular judgment, and the long interlude of the Choirs of Angelicals prepares us for the denouement of the promised-to-be-brief parting of the Angel from the Soul, with the final intrusion of the Soul's deathbed on earth, even as the Souls in Purgatory join him in the hopes to "see Him in the truth of everlasting day." And the Angel's loving farewell! Glorious!

Elgar's music is transcendent and Newman's drama is based on doctrine and devotion. Perhaps Elgar's work--not an oratorio, as he would not allow that term--is something only a Catholic may fully appreciate. 

Nevertheless, the announcers on the BBC mentioned the audience's rapt silence during the performance in Albert Hall, and the ovation was enthusiastic at the end. Such a confident, promising conclusion, as the orchestra, choirs, and Angel serenade the Soul demonstrates more than the audience may have dreamed as true--even as that final Amen and timpani roll presage a warning for the rest of us.

St. John Henry Newman's "Re-Imagining" of Purgatory

On Monday, October 26, I watched Professor Kenneth Parker's Journey Home episode on EWTN. He is currently the Ryan Endowed Chair for Newman Studies, Professor of Historical Theology and soon will be the Chairman of the newly formed Department of Catholic Studies both at Duquesne University. 

He grew up in a Christian community I'd never heard of before, the Pilgrim Holiness Church. He studied Historical Theology at the University of Cambridge, became a Catholic in 1982 and discerned a  vocation as a Benedictine monk in California before returning to the academic world. As he says on his page at Duquesne:

My original area of scholarship focused on early modern English theology, and I have published on English sabbatarianism, Richard Greenham, and Elizabethan pastoral care. In the late 1980s my research interests expanded to include John Henry Newman and Christian historiographical traditions. In the early 2000s, I began exploring the papal infallibility debates of the 1860s and how history was employed by key theologians. This research has drawn me into studies of two Irish American archepiscopal brothers, Francis and Peter Kenrick, who profoundly influenced the discourse on papal authority in the 19th-century North Atlantic Catholic world. Their Irish background has led to research on the Irish gallican tradition and its impact on Catholicism in the United States.

In the course of his interview, some viewers sent emails and one of them asked about a neglected or relatively unknown aspect of Saint John Henry Newman's works and thought. Professor Parker suggested that how Newman "re-imagined our understanding of Purgatory" in The Dream of Gerontius was one thing, continuing with the thought that Newman often regretted "from his first book" [The Arians of the Fourth Century] that doctrines celebrated doxologically through worship had to be defended through intellectual argument, removing them from their proper place. 

What I interpreted him to mean is that the Divinity of Jesus was celebrated in the liturgy of the Church, but the attack on that Divinity by Arius meant that orthodox believers had to provide technical exegesis and theological arguments to defend and codify it. 

Furthermore, I conclude that Professor Parker was saying that in The Dream of Gerontius, with its earthly and heavenly liturgies of prayer and praise, Newman was providing a fresh vision of Purgatory in its proper context--worship and awe of the Holy Trinity; the justice and mercy of God; the reality of sin, repentance, and expiation--all in the experience of a man dying in the state of grace, absolved of sin, and prepared for judgment by the traditions of the Church.

When Gerontius's Soul approaches particular judgment, he hears those at his deathbed praying for him, and his Guardian Angel explains:

It is the voice of friends around thy bed,
Who say the "Subvenite" with the priest.
Hither the echoes come; before the Throne
Stands the great Angel of the Agony,
The same who strengthen'd Him, what time He knelt
Lone in that garden shade, bedew'd with blood.
That Angel best can plead with Him for all
Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

The Subvenite is the responsory prayed immediately after the Christian has died:

R. Subveníte, Sancti Dei, occúrrite, Angeli Dómini, Suscipiéntes ániman ejus, Offeréntes eam in conspéctu Altíssimi. Suscípiat te Christus, qui vocávit te, et in sinum Abrahae Angeli dedúcant te. Suscipiéntes ánimam ejus, Offeréntes eam in conspéctu Altíssimi. 

V. Réquiem aetérnam dona ei, Dómine, et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Offeréntes eam in conspéctu Altìssimi. 

R. Come to his assistance, all you Saints of God: meet him, all you Angels of God: receiving his soul, offering it in the sight of the Most High. May Christ receive you, who hath called you, and may the Angels conduct you to Abraham's bosom. Receiving his (her) soul and offering it in the sight of the Most High.

V. Eternal rest give to him (her), Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon him (her). Offering it in the sight of the Most High.

This is what has been happening to Gerontius's Soul; the Angels of God have received it and are offering it "in the sight of the Most High" as the Soul goes to face God and Judgment. And after the Soul has received Judgment, Newman places a poem of great subtlety mixing joy and pain, longing and peace as the Soul is "happy in [his] pain", "Lone, not forlorn--" and will sing to "soothe [his] stricken breast":

Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless, and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn –
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn,
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne’er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its Sole Peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love: –
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day.

[His Guardian Angel had warned his Soul that he would feel this way:

When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart,
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e’er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in His pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned,
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from His sight;
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.]

Sir Edward Elgar left that passage out of the libretto of his oratorio, but that image of the Soul seeing with spiritual eyes the love God has for him and how much the Soul has failed to receive that love worthily--and that moment "will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory" is a re-imagining of the moment of Judgment and Purgatory, and even the immortal soul's reaction to its fate. It is ready for Purgatory now; it wants to be purified and prepared to enter that Presence again.

This is the passage that even Charles Kingsley, Newman's defeated opponent of the Apologia pro Vita Sua crisis could accept, as cited in this article by Robert Carballo:

I read the Dream with awe and admiration. However utterly I may differ from the entourage in which Dr. Newman’s present creed surrounds the central idea, I must feel that the central idea is as true, as it is noble, and it, as I suppose, is this: The longing of the soul to behold the Deity … that the soul is ready, even glad, to be hurled back to any depth, to endure any pain, from the moment it becomes aware of God’s actual perfection and its own impurity and meanness.

The Guardian Angel's description of Purgatory echoes a poem Newman wrote in 1853, "The Golden Prison", promising the presence of Angels even there--the Soul will not suffer alone.

Now let the golden prison open its gates,
Making sweet music, as each fold revolves
Upon its ready hinge. And ye great powers,
Angels of Purgatory, receive from me
My charge, a precious soul, until the day,
When, from all bond and forfeiture released,
I shall reclaim it for the courts of light.

And then the Guardian Angel's final words refer to "penal waters", a lake, and "bed of sorrows", as the Angels of Purgatory tend, nurse, and lull the penitent soul and prayers and Masses on earth make the time pass swiftly until she returns to convey his Soul to Heaven:

Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.
Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
Farewell, but not for ever brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow. 

Newman emphasizes that the sufferings of the Soul are outside of earthly time; it is not earthly days or weeks or months or years that pass but merely a "night", and the Guardian Angel will return "on the morrow".

Professor Parker mentioned Elgar's oratorio based upon Newman's poem: Dame Janet Baker's performance of this final aria is the perfect conclusion. Elgar's brilliance of weaving the prayers of the other Souls in Purgatory reciting Psalm 90 as the Angelicals sing "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" lead us to a peaceful Amen. 

Farewell, but not forever.

An Appreciation of Elgar and "Englishness"

From The Walsingham Society's blog comes this appreciation of two English artists by James Patrick:

Beneath their defense of beauty lay themes that gave their art its power. There was a reliance upon tradition in a way that presaged Eliot”s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” which is to say that in the work of each the past lived in the present, transformed by a new moment of creativity. “Both Elgar and Strauss (like Brahms and in contrast to Wagner) acknowledged the weight of history and mirrored some degree of awe for the traditions of composition…. Despite recent efforts to construe Elgar as a modernist innovator, he remained within the framework of ideas, conflicts, forms and vocabulary of the late nineteenth century.”10 [endnotes in the the blog post] Voysey’s houses, the house that loves the ground, with its great sheltering roof, looking always as though it should be thatched, its white cast walls, the reminiscence of Tudor half-timbering, recapitulated in a new, subtly modern key the past of English domestic architecture.

Elgar’s music from the first was understood as expressing something authentic about the modern English character, landscape, and self-image. “Because the gesture, rhetoric and sonority he fashioned have come to locate the unique power, intensity, confidence, and refinement of the English, Elgar’s music has retained its role as an embodiment of Englishness.”11 His critics sometimes deprecated his music as expressions of jingoism, the nonsensical neologism descriptive of the perfervid patriotism that beset the nation in the shadow of the Great War, but the imperial swagger was pride in England and its past more than pride in imperial success.12 Critics have noted that in Elgar’s music at its most assertive what one sometimes hears is a sub-theme reflecting something of Kipling’s “Recessional,” a muted acceptance of an all-too-transitory glory.13 Voysey’s architecture was, obviously, rooted in what he conceived to be the national architecture of Tudor England, informed by a love for Pugin and Ruskin and by what the Ruskinian tradition considered the Gothic principle that buildings grow from the inside.

Few great composers are tied to a national heritage as tightly as was Elgar, whose works sing of a great nation, possessed of a heroic past (Froissart, The Black Knight, 1892), and of a great empire at its zenith, when the domination of the oceans by Great Britain and its government of a quarter of the globe seemed as solid as Everest. When the Pomp and Circumstance March in D Major, “Land of Hope and Glory,” was premiered in London on 22 October 1901 the crowd roared for an encore, and to restore order the conductor, Henry Wood, played it again; it has ever after been a kind of second national anthem.14 The great marches themselves were another sign of Elgar’s ability to use the tradition: “I did not see why the ordinary quick march should not be treated on a large scale, in the way that the waltz, the slow march, and even the polka have been treated by the great composers.”15 Elgar provided the setting for the coronation of George V in 1911 and the British empire Exhibition of 1924, for which he produced the Empire March and the Pageant of England. In that year he was appointed Master of the King’s Musick and in 1931 was created a baronet, Sir Edward of Broadheath. There was pride in the imperial bloom, but the love affair was with everything English. Elgar preferred that the very names of instruments reflect their English past— hautboy rather than oboe—, and Voysey would write, “Instead of studying the five orders of architecture, we had far better study the five orders of Englishmen.”16

I am not familiar with Charles Voysey, but according to wikipedia, he was:

an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a simple Arts and Crafts style, but he is renowned as the architect of a number of notable country houses. He was one of the first people to understand and appreciate the significance of industrial design. He has been considered one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture, a notion which he rejected. His English domestic architecture draws heavily on vernacular rather than academic tradition, influenced by the ideas of Herbert Tudor Buckland (1869–1951) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852).

There is an organization with a web page devoted to his life and work: The C.F.A. Voysey Society.

"The Dream of Gerontius", Elgar's Oratorio

Edward Elgar's oratorio based on Blessed John Henry Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius premiered on October 3, 1900 at the Birmingham Music Festival in an unfortunately disastrous performance. Since then, however, it has been performed and recorded often. My favorite recording is the one conducted by John Barbirolli with Janet Baker as the Guardian Angel.

In 2000, its centennial was celebrated by many performances in Great Britain and here in the USA. There was quite a controversy when a music critic in California stated that one would have to be a Catholic to appreciate the content of the work--he could judge the artistic and performance merits, but not really be engaged by the words and music. Some queried whether he would say the same for Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis?

Blessed John Henry Newman wrote The Dream of Gerontius in 1865 to wide-ranging praise, even from non-Catholics (e.g., William Gladstone)! It obtained real notoriety when a copy of the poem was found among the belongings of General "Chinese" Gordon after his death in Khartoum with pencilled margin notes. From the text (with various settings) come two hymns: "Firmly I Believe and Truly" and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height"!

On a personal note, I can never think of "The Dream of Gerontius" without remembering Heather Muller, a beautiful young woman who played the role of the Angel in a dramatic reading of the poem at a Newman School of Catholic Thought held at the Spiritual Life Center here in Wichita. The late Sister Madeleine Kisner, ASC expertly excerpted the text for performance, the opening act on a program with Professor Regis Martin on "Newman and the Four Last Things". Heather was murdered by the infamous Carr brothers in December of 2000.

Edward Elgar's Birthday--and excerpts from "The Dream of Gerontius"

The English composer Edward Elgar was born June 2, 1857. In his honor, here are some links to excerpts of The Dream of Gerontius, the oratorio he wrote based on Blessed John Henry Newman's great poem of the Four Last Things--and one of my favorites of all this works!

First, in pride of place, the great Dame Janet Baker singing the Angel's Farewell to the Soul of Gerontius--"Farewell, but not forever. . . . And I will come and wake thee . . ." --



Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.
Angels to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.
Farewell! Farewell!

SOULS IN PURGATORY
Lord, Thou hast been our refuge: in every generation;
Before the hills were born, and the world
was, from age to age Thou art God.
Bring us not, Lord, very low: for Thou hast
said, Come back again, O Lord! how long:
and be entreated for Thy servants.

The Four Last Things:

Death: Go Forth, Christian Soul--
The Priest and Assistants:

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God
The Omnipotent Father, Who created thee!
Go, in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Son of the Living God, Who bled for thee!
Go, in the Name of the Holy Spirit,
Who Hath been poured out on thee!
Go in the name
Of Angels and Archangels; in the name
Of Thrones and Dominations; in the name
Of Princedoms and of Powers; and in the name
Of Cherubim and Seraphim, go forth!
Go, in the name of Patriarchs and Prophets;
And of Apostles and Evangelists,
Of Martyrs and Confessors, in the name
Of holy Monks and Hermits; in the name
Of holy Virgins; and all Saints of God,
Both men and women, go! Go on thy course;
And may thy place today be found in peace,
And may thy dwelling be the Holy Mount
Of Sion: - through the Same, through Christ our Lord"

Judgement--the Angel of the Agony and the Judgement Seat:

Angel
Thy judgement now is near, for we are come
Into the veiled presence of our God.

Soul
I hear the voices that I left on earth.

Angel
It is the voice of friends around thy bed,
Who say the 'Subvenite' with the priest.
Hither the echoes come; before the Throne
Stands the great Angel of the Agony,
The same who strengthened Him, what time He knelt
Lone in the garden shade; bedewed with blood.
That Angel best can plead with Him for all
Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

Angel of the Agony
Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on Thee;
Jesu! by that cold dismay which sickened Thee;
Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrilled in Thee;
Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled Thee;
Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled Thee;
Jesu! by that innocence which girdled Thee;
Jesu! by that sanctity which reigned in Thee;
Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with Thee;
Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to Thee;
Souls, who in prison, calm and patient, wait for Thee;
Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to Thee,
To that glorious Home, where they shall ever gaze on Thee.

Soul
I go before my Judge. . .

Voices on Earth
Be merciful, be gracious; spare him, Lord
Be merciful, be gracious; Lord, deliver him.

Angel
. . . Praise to His Name!
O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God.

Heaven: the Angels sing Praise to the Holiest in the Height -- and the whole chorus!

And Hell: the Demons:

Low-born clods
Of brute earth
They aspire
To become gods,
By a new birth,
And an extra grace,
And a score of merits,
As if aught
Could stand in place
Of the high thought,
And the glance of fire
Of the great spirits,
The powers blest,
The lords by right,
The primal owners,
Of the proud dwelling
And realm of light,—
Dispossess'd,
Aside thrust,
Chuck'd down
By the sheer might
Of a despot's will,
Of a tyrant's frown,
Who after expelling
Their hosts, gave,
Triumphant still,
And still unjust,
Each forfeit crown
To psalm-droners,
And canting groaners,
To every slave,
And pious cheat,
And crawling knave,
Who lick'd the dust
Under his feet.

More here on Elgar from the BBC.