Preview: The Deathbed of Gerontius: "Go forth, Christian Soul"!

During this month of devotions for the Holy Souls in Purgatory--who are indeed holy and bound for Heaven--Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss themes and imagery from St. John Henry Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius on the Son Rise Morning Show each Monday in November.

So on Monday, November 7, at about 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern Time (don't forget to Fall Back this weekend!), we'll start the series. Please listen live here, and remember that you may subscribe to the Son Rise Morning Show website for a reminder of the daily broadcasts here.

First, some background on the poem:

The plot of Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius is simple:

1) Gerontius is on his deathbed and receives Last Rites and prays before he dies
2) Gerontius dies and experiences the afterlife as a disembodied Soul
3) Gerontius' Soul meets his Guardian Angel
4) His Soul encounters the demons of Hell on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul hears the choirs of heavenly Angels on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul is judged and sent to Purgatory
6) The Soul's Guardian Angel deposits him in Purgatory and promises to come back to convey him to Heaven

Newman wrote this poem, the longest he'd ever written, on 52 scraps of paper between January 17 and February 7, 1865. One of his biographers, Wilfrid Ward, describes its composition:

Now, after the abandonment of the Oxford scheme* gave him leisure for it, he set down in dramatic form the vision of a Christian's death on which his imagination had been dwelling. The writing of it was a sudden inspiration, and his work was begun in January and completed in February 1865. "On the 17th of January last," he writes to Mr. Allies in October, "it came into my head to write it, I really can't tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly." . . .

*The Oxford Scheme mentioned by Ward (son of William George Ward, the ultramontanist) was the plan to found an Oratory in Oxford to serve Catholic men attending one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford.

The Dream of Gerontius was then published in The Month, a periodical founded in 1864 by the convert Frances Margaret Taylor (Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Poor Servants of the Mother of God). The Jesuits in England bought The Month in 1865 and Father Henry James Coleridge, another convert (great nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), became the publisher and editor. Read more about the rather surprising response to the poem here, as Anglicans like Charles Kingsley, William Gladstone, and General George Gordon admired it greatly!

But the focus in our discussion Monday is on the content of the poem itself, not that background!

The first part of the poem juxtaposes the protagonist's preparation for death with those at deathbed praying for him, according to Catholic ritual.

Gerontius is an old man, a faithful and practicing Catholic, and he is experiencing both the dread of death and the promise of eternal life:

JESU, MARIA—I am near to death,
And Thou art calling me; I know it now.
Not by the token of this faltering breath,
This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,—
(Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)
'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)
That I am going, that I am no more.
'Tis this strange innermost abandonment,
(Lover of souls! great God! I look to Thee,)
This emptying out of each constituent
And natural force, by which I come to be.

He asks for his friends and the priest with him to pray for him and they do, beginning with the Litany of the Saints:

Kyrie eleïson, Christe eleïson, Kyrie eleïson.
Holy Mary, pray for him.
All holy Angels, pray for him.
Choirs of the righteous, pray for him. 
Holy Abraham, pray for him.
St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.
St. Peter, St. Paul, St Andrew, St. John,
All Apostles, all Evangelists, pray for him.
All holy Disciples of the Lord, pray for him.
All holy Innocents, pray for him.
All holy Martyrs, all holy Confessors,
All holy Hermits, all holy Virgins . . .

Hearing their prayers, he can pray as he thought he could not:

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 then prays what will become one of the popular hymns taken from this poem, "Firmly I believe and truly" as he confesses and professes a summary of Catholic belief:

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
Parce mihi, Domine. 
Firmly I believe and truly
God is three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son. . . .

But then he weakens again ("I can no more") and indeed, he senses and fears the presence of something evil:

Some bodily form of ill
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps
Its hideous wings,
And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
Some Angel, Jesu! such as came to Thee
In Thine own agony …
Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary,
pray for me.

So the attendants intercede for him again ("Rescue this Thy servant in his evil hour") and after he dies, the priest intones the traditional prayer as I find it in my 1962 Roman Missal (or you may find it here):

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 pour'd out on thee!

So what Newman has accomplished in this section is to convey even a faithful Catholic's human fear of death, describing both the physical and spiritual weakness that comes upon Gerontius. He cannot pray for himself as he wishes, so he asks others to do it for him. Gerontius faces the great mystery of death--he does not know what it is to not be alive and so he faces it with trepidation, even as he has faith in God and in the Church's prayers for him. 

And these prayers are both on earth and in heaven, as the "assistants" at his deathbed and the priest call upon Jesus Christ our Lord to have mercy on Gerontius, and implore the angels and saints to pray with them for him. Since Newman poetically adapted prayers that many a Catholic had heard while at a loved one's deathbed, this was familiar scene to them. They had made the responses in the Litany of the Saints and watched their mother or father, brother or sister, die; seen the Sacrament of Anointing, and heard the priest's commending prayers for their loved one:

Receive, Lord, Thy servant (handmaid) into the place of salvation, which he (she) hopes to obtain through Thy mercy.R.Amen. Deliver, Lord, the soul of Thy servant (handmaid) from all danger of Hell; and from all pain and tribulation.R.Amen . . . Let the heavens be opened to him (her), and the angels rejoice with him (her). Let the archangel St. Michael, whom Thou didst appoint the chief of the heavenly host, conduct him (her). Let the holy angels come out to meet him (her), and carry him (her) to the city of heavenly Jerusalem. Let blessed Peter the apostle, to whom God gave the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, receive him (her). Let St. Paul the apostle, who was a vessel of election, assist him (her). Let St. John the beloved disciple, to whom the secrets of Heaven were revealed, intercede for him (her). Let all the holy apostles, who received from Jesus Christ the power of binding and loosing, pray for him (her). Let all the saints and elect of God, who in this world have suffered torments in the name of Christ, intercede for him (her); that being freed from the prison of his (her) body, he (she) may be admitted into the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who with Thee and the Holy Ghost, lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

Newman had dramatized it and brought to their imaginations afresh. In next week's highlight from The Death of Gerontius, we''ll see how Newman imagined the Soul of Gerontius after death and its meeting with its Guardian Angel!

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Source (Public Domain): Deathbed Scene from a 16th century Office of the Dead.

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.

Preview: The Premiere of Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius", 1900

There's yet another new recording of Sir Edward Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (from Finland!), based on Saint John Henry Newman's epic poem--in scope if not in length--of the Four Last Things. The last recording won multiple awards this year. 

And yet when it premiered in 1900 in Birmingham, things did not go well, and reviews of performances lately often include comments about "how Catholic" and esoteric the work is, qualified by praise of the music and orchestration! Nevertheless, it's an often performed and recorded choral masterpiece. 

Since this year marks the 125th anniversary of Elgar composing it and of its premier in 1900, it's up next in our Son Rise Morning Show 2025 Anniversaries series on Monday, August 25. I'll be on the air around 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Elgar (June 2, 1857-February 23, 1934) composed this work (not really an oratorio) 60 years after Saint John Henry Newman wrote the Dream of Gerontius in 1865--so 2025 is also the 160th anniversary of the poem from which Elgar excerpted sections.

Edward Elgar's mother Ann was a convert to Catholicism while his father remained Anglican; Edward was baptized and raised Catholic. His father William disapproved--while at the same time serving as the organist at Saint George's Catholic Church in Worcester from 1846 to 1885--and became a Catholic on his deathbed! As the BBC classical magazine website explains, Elgar was coming off the great success of the Enigma Variations in 1900 when he decided to compose a great choral work based on Newman's poem for the Three Choirs Festival in Birmingham that year. He composed quickly and concluded that "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."

Unfortunately,

the first performance was plagued by mishaps. The choirmaster, Charles Swinnerton Heap, died shortly after rehearsals began and was replaced by the ageing William Stockley, who wasn’t equal to the task and who, in any case, didn’t try to mask his distaste for the subject matter. Hans Richter, the conductor, only received the full score one day before orchestra rehearsals began and only one of the soloists was in good voice on the day. Although the press generally conceded that a decent work had been presented, it was widely accepted that the first performance had been a disaster.

Fortunately,

The German conductor Julius Buths was in the Birmingham audience and recognised that Gerontius merited a decent hearing. It was Buths’s performances in Düsseldorf in 1901 and ’02 that alerted the British musical world to the fact that Elgar had indeed produced something extraordinary. The occasions were a huge success, Elgar was fêted as a hero and was presented with two enormous laurel wreaths which he and Alice somehow managed to lug back to Malvern. Richard Strauss wrote ‘I raise my glass to the welfare and success of the first English progressivist, Meister Elgar’. If the Catholic Elgar hadn’t arrived before, the Anglican establishment had no choice but to concede that he certainly had done so now.

In spite of reviews like this (or in defiance of them!), Elgar's Dream of Gerontius is one of my favorite works. I've three recordings on CD and the DVD record of a great performance at Canterbury Cathedral by Dame Janet Baker as the Angel and Peter Pears as Gerontius/the Soul, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. 

When my mother was in her final days, I was called by the Hospice nurse to come early one more morning and I took my 1962 Roman Missal with the prayers for the dying. When I prayed the priest's prayer "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! . . .

--I heard Elgar's music in my "mind's ear"!

What's sad about Elgar's own life is that the initial failure of the Dream of Gerontius had lasting effects on his faith in God and religious devotion, as this website explains:

Ironically, it was the early failure of The Dream of Gerontius itself that led him to make the oft-quoted remark “I always knew God was against art…”, continuing “I have allowed my heart to open once – it is now shut against every religious feeling…”, this shortly before beginning work on The Apostles and The Kingdom, two oratorios viewed from an admittedly more neutral religious perspective.

As he grew older, his belief gradually withered. Although on his deathbed he is reported to have reaffirmed his commitment to the Roman Catholic faith and, while unconscious, received the last rites, he had not attended a church service for many a year. He claimed to have no belief in a life after death and to have taken exception to the dogma of the Catholic liturgy.

That same website offers a snarky comment about Elgar's memorial stained glass window being in the Anglican Worcester Cathedral (image use under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license: "The Elgar Window by A. K. Nicholson, 1935, based on the Dream of Gerontius. The window shows Gerontius ascending to the Heavenly City, surrounded by figures from the Bible [?]*." 

I could be snarky too and point out that Worcester Cathedral was a Catholic church from 680 to 1535 (and 1555-1559 during Mary I's reign)! *There are Catholic saints depicted there, including two canonized bishops of Worcester, Oswald and Wulfstan, Saint Cecilia, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Peter (with the keys!) the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and King David with his harp, etc.

The memorial plaque to Elgar in the cathedral includes the words from the prayers he may or may not have heard on his deathbed: "PROFICISCERE, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!"

Edward Elgar and his wife Alice are buried in the cemetery of St. Wulstan’s Catholic Church at Little Malvern in Worcestershire, where a 75th anniversary memorial Mass was offered for him in 2009.

May Edward and Alice Elgar rest in peace!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): English composer Edward Elgar, likely in the early 1900s.

Preview: Gerontius and the Four Last Things

Matt Swaim and I will talk about Blessed John Henry Newman's great poem about the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monday September 9 in our Santo Subito Series! (6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern)

The plot of Blessed John Henry Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius is simple:

1) Gerontius is on his deathbed and receives Last Rites and prays before he dies
2) Gerontius dies and experiences the afterlife as a disembodied Soul
3) Gerontius' Soul meets his Guardian Angel
4) His Soul encounters the demons of Hell on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul hears the choirs of heavenly Angels on his way to Judgment
5) The Soul is judged and sent to Purgatory
6) The Soul's Guardian Angel deposits him in Purgatory and promises to come back to convey him to Heaven

Newman wrote this poem, the longest he'd ever written, on 52 scraps of paper between January 17 and February 7, 1865. One of his biographers, Wilfrid Ward, describes its composition:

Now, after the abandonment of the Oxford scheme gave him leisure for it, he set down in dramatic form the vision of a Christian's death on which his imagination had been dwelling. The writing of it was a sudden inspiration, and his work was begun in January and completed in February 1865. "On the 17th of January last," he writes to Mr. Allies in October, "it came into my head to write it, I really can't tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly." To another correspondent [The Rev. John Telford, priest at Ryde] also, who was fascinated by the Dream, and longed to have the picture it gave still further filled in, he wrote:

"You do me too much honour if you think I am to see in a dream everything that is to be seen in the subject dreamed about. I have said what I saw. Various spiritual writers see various aspects of it; and under their protection and pattern I have set down the dream as it came before the sleeper. It is not my fault if the sleeper did not dream more. Perhaps something woke him. Dreams are generally fragmentary. I have nothing more to tell."

The Oxford Scheme mentioned by Ward (son of William George Ward, the ultramontanist) was the plan to found an Oratory in Oxford to serve Catholic men attending one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford. At last, Catholics could attend and earn degrees at Oxford (and Cambridge) because they did not have to swear oaths to uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England any more. 

Catholics could attend and earn degrees but the English hierarchy did not think it was a good idea. Although Newman was back in favor--both in Rome and in Oxford--after the publication of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, the College of Propaganda Fide and the hierarchy still didn't want him at Oxford again. Newman himself wasn't sure he wanted to be in Oxford again. Nevertheless, Newman, the Birmingham Oratorians, and his friend James Hope-Scott had started work to buy five acres in Oxford and plan an Oratory. The difficulties of this venture continued for several months and then opposition to his involvement led Newman to stop trying to make it work. 

Perhaps after such strain of confusion, controversy, and confrontation, it was restful to contemplate the certainties of God's justice and mercy when a man dies. No more secrecy and indirection; the soul meets Jesus, knows Him, knows himself, and looks forward to being with the Holy Trinity and the saints in Heaven after his purgation. Newman explored the Church's dogmatic teachings about death and judgement, heaven and hell in a mystical, dreamy poem, harking back to his childhood love of fantasy and wonder--his sense that life was somehow a dream--while reflecting his assent to the certainties of divine revelation and his faith in the reality of God. He also includes liturgical and devotional prayers for the dying and the death, including the Litany of the Saints and the Proficiscere prayer ("Go forth, Christian Soul") in a supremely, confidently Catholic poem.

The Dream of Gerontius was then published in The Month, a periodical founded in 1864 by the convert Frances Margaret Taylor (Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Poor Servants of the Mother of God). The Jesuits in England bought The Month in 1865 and Father Henry James Coleridge, another convert (great nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), became the publisher and editor. It was then included in Newman's Verses on Various Occasions in 1867.

The poem was very well received by Catholics and some Anglicans alike. Charles Kingsley, his recently vanquished foe, William Gladstone, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, the decadent school poet, admired the poem's verse and power. Francis Hastings Doyle, the Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, gave a lecture on The Dream of Gerontius in 1868. News that General George Gordon, "Chinese Gordon", had a copy of the poem with him at Khartoum--and that he had annotated it--when he was attacked and killed in January 1885 gave the poem even greater notoriety. As Ian Ker notes in his biography of Newman "interest in the fate of Gordon of Khartoum" was so intense that William Neville transcribed Gordon's annotations into copies of The Dream of Gerontius! (p. 741).

Those annotations would play a role in Edward Elgar's setting The Dream of Gerontius to music for the Birmingham Music Festival in 1900--but that's another topic. We'll talk about the poem in the context of the Four Last Things, Catholic doctrine, and the liturgy on Monday.

Closing Out the Proms: Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius

At least as of this posting, you may listen to the performance of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius at the Proms (the penultimate night) in Albert Hall on September 11, 2015 on the BBC site. Sir Simon Rattle conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. Reviews of the soloists were mixed, but both the composition and the orchestra/chorus were appreciated, as in this commentary:

And so it ends – with angels and archangels and “heart-subduing melody”. The Proms might not officially finish till tomorrow night, but this penultimate concert is always the true close of the season, and what better or more fitting an ending – especially on this most poignant anniversary – than Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.

Cardinal Newman’s verse – the outpourings of a fervent Catholic convert – is spiced with incense and ecstasy, drawing music of matching potency from Elgar. Sprawling over two fat halves rather than a tidier multi-movement structure, the oratorio unfolds in almost continuous swelling and ebbing of melody (cruelly bisected here by an interval), expanding to fill any space with its surges of choir and orchestra.

But The Royal Albert Hall isn’t just any space. A temple to art and science, it is to secular aspiration as Elgar’s oratorio is to spiritual. It’s a friction that only intensifies the piece in this setting – Victorian England distilled into an evening. It was Gerontius, however, that prompted Strauss to hail its composer as “the first English progressivist”, and this new Austro-Germanic drift was sympathetically captured in this performance by Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Golden-sweet, the Vienna strings traced halos round Elgar’s lines, softly insistent but never striving to fill the hall, finding an exquisite simplicity for the opening of Part II. Where they were bright the brass glowed darker, urged by Rattle into barking frenzy for the demonic sections, but otherwise a supportive foil to baritone Roderick Williams’s deliberately shaded vocal colours. . . .

Founded in 2012, the BBC Proms Youth Choir brings together young singers from choirs across the country, its personnel changing every year. What has remained constant, however, is the standard. While perhaps a less natural fit for the thicker and weightier writing of Gerontius than 2012’s A Child of Our Time (unaided here, as with 2013’s Sea Symphony, by the BBCSC), the chorus made it work on their own terms. Mezzos found a lovely forthright tone for the lower writing, while the men came into their own as the demons. And all, from the tight fugal “Dispossessed” to the hushed pealings of the Angelical Chorus, was immaculately precise, following Rattle’s carefully (sometimes too-carefully) crafted shapes to the last detail.

As send-offs go this was a good one – a celebration of British musical richness whose quiet affirmations left none of the sour aftertaste the jingoism of the Last Night traditionally provides.

Today is the 115th anniversary of the premiere in Birmingham, which was a disaster because of an unprepared chorus, but The Dream of Gerontius is a masterpiece. Sir Simon Rattle and the same forces presented the work in Lucerne a couple of days later last month. 

For years, of course, Rattle was the conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and he recorded Gerontius with Janet Baker in her second recording as the Guardian Angel (the first was with Sir John Barbirolli). Here is one reviewer's opinion of her artistry:

Janet Baker has recorded the role of the Angel twice : with Barbirolli (1964) and Rattle. More than twenty years separate the recordings and both bring huge rewards. There is no denying that the voice is far fresher in 1964 where Miss Baker delivers a very dramatic reading of the role, no doubt spurred on by Barbirolli. The interpretation has softened and deepened by 1986, but it is to the earlier recording I turn again and again. As when discussing the Gerontius of Nash and of Vickers, words cannot adequately do justice to the sheer thrill of Baker's performances, but a few examples must be given. As with Yvonne Minton, the poise on the last section of the 'Angel's Song' is exquisite with Barbirolli; with Rattle it remains very beautiful and there is even an added warmth. "You cannot now cherish a wish..." in the 1964 recording is one of those phrases that simply lives on in the mind - totally unforgettable. Staying with 1964, Baker's launching of the "duet" 'A presage falls upon thee' is simply glorious and, as already implied, with Richard Lewis an ideal blend is achieved to magical effect. With John Mitchinson (Rattle) this section lacks a sense of repose. Only Janet Baker, in both recordings, can match Alfreda Hodgson in the section "Yes, for one moment thou shalt see thy Lord - one moment". With Baker I hear it with tears pricking my eyes. Throughout her exchanges with Mitchinson's Gerontius, she achieves a stillness not always in evidence under Barbirolli. And so I could go on. If you want to judge for yourself, I would ask you to listen to the 'Farewell' under Barbirolli. This is glorious singing by any standard with some heart-stopping moments, eg. "I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee" (figs 128-129) - this is surely the peak of Janet Baker's art.

Here is that "Farewell" from the 1964 recording.

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!

"The Choral" and "The Dream of Gerontius"

I made a presentation on the First Friday of October at Mary, Seat of Wisdom, a classical high school here in Wichita on Saint John Henry Newman and "the Wichita Connection", tracing the history of the the programs, events, topics, and speakers presented at different venues here since 1979 and my memories of them. This was after Pope Leo XIV had approved the Cause for Saint John Henry Newman to be named the 38th Doctor of the Church. 

I noted that Newman was indeed in the news, not only for that proclamation but for other reasons: King Charles III visiting the Birmingham Oratory, Newman being the co-patron of Catholic Education with Saint Thomas Aquinas by Pope Leo XIV--and the ongoing attention paid to Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius based on Newman's poem of the same name. I also mentioned that more and more books and studies will be published about Newman and I just finished reading one of the latest, The Most Dangerous Man in England: Newman & the Laity by Paul Shrimpton, published by Word On Fire (review to come).

I highlighted Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius because yet another CD had been announced, a live performance from the 2022 BBC Proms--and now there's yet another announced by Hyperion. And those two on the heels of one from Finland!

Not only that but now there's a film, The Choral, which features a performance of that great work in an English village during the crisis of World War I. As the young men of the village, the basses, baritones, and tenors who sing in the Church of England's choir, enlist for military service--including the chorus master himself--how will the traditions of the community survive?

By hiring a new chorus master and performing Elgar's Dream of Gerontius! In spite of the fact the chorus master's been working in Germany (the enemy) and the work is all about a Soul destined for Purgatory, which Anglicans don't believe in!

Presto Music has posted a summary of the film and reactions of several men who have conducted or performed in the work (no mezzo-soprano Angels!?!?):

Starring Ralph Fiennes as a brilliant, controversial conductor, Roger Allam as an enthusiastic but overparted amateur tenor and Simon Russell Beale* as an irascible Edward Elgar, Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner's The Choral centres on a Yorkshire choral society's ambitious quest to perform Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius in 1916 - with their tenor and bass sections depleted by conscription, a Palm Court trio standing in for Elgar's vast orchestra, and a traumatised young soldier newly returned from the Front in the daunting title-role.

* Coincidentally, I had just re-watched God's Composer (Music by Tomás Luis de Victoria from the Church of San Antonio de los Alemanes, Madrid (Single DVD) Presented by Simon Russell Beale; Featuring Harry Christophers & The Sixteen)!

The new release from Hyperion of yet another Dream has a tie-in with the movie in a way because it features a village choral society, from a village much like the one featured in the film, as the Huddersfield Choral Society website emphasizes:

There are just so many parallels between the fictitious choral society in the film and HCS: The Choral is set in a mill town called Ramsden; and the choir is set to perform Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Well, we thought, we’re known as The Choral by those who love us; Huddersfield was owned by the Ramsden estate until the 1920s; and we’re the choral society that made the first recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. And we’ve just made another!

Choir member and social history enthusiast, Gaynor Haliday, decided to delve deeper into the archives and uncover the experiences of HCS during the First World War. And with the season of Remembrance upon us we’d like to share this with you. It’s longer than our usual posts, so you might want to settle down with a cuppa . . .

If you click on that link, there's another link to a document describing how the village of Huddersfield endured the losses of World War I. Hyperion Records--the CD will be released in January, 2026--also provides a .pdf of their booklet with the same article, and notes the strong connection between the society and the Dream:

It was the Huddersfield Choral Society which made the first complete recording of ‘Gerontius’ on 8-12 April 1945; this latest chapter in the Society’s ties to the work was recorded eighty years later, virtually to the day, on 5 April 2025 and displays as deep an affinity for Elgar’s masterpiece as ever, especially with a conductor of Martyn Brabbins’s Elgarian credentials.

The Huddersfield Choral Society were featured on two mid-20th century recordings by Sir Malcolm Sargent, in 1945 and 1955, according to this comparative review.

The movie--which I hope will come to Wichita, Kansas--is scheduled to be released in the USA on Christmas Day this year! 

That is a picture of me giving my presentation at the first First Friday Tea at the top of the post. The second in November featured the story of Whittaker Chambers, given by the headmaster, Dr. Susan Orr Traffas, and the third in December will feature a lecture by John Traffas (her husband) on "Pope Benedict XVI and his teaching on political life": 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. with tea, coffee, treats, and other libations! It's my new First Friday tradition!

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.

Newman's Four Last Things

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show bright and early this morning (6:50 a.m. Central/ 7:50 a.m. Eastern) to talk with Matt Swaim about Blessed John Henry Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius--specifically in the time we have available about how Newman depicts Gerontius's happy death; the Soul of Gerontius being more truly Gerontius than he was on earth, the Christological doctrine the Choirs of Angels extol as the Demons express their emptiness and chaos; the immediacy of judgement; the Soul's rejoicing at entering Purgatory and being prepared to enter Heaven.

Gerontius is a good Catholic on his deathbed in Part I of the poem; he is prepared for death with a priest and friends with him, but he feels some fear and abandonment. He feels "a chill at heart" and a "strange innermost abandonment" so he asks his friends to pray for him because he cannot. After they've prayed for him with age-old prayers for the dead, he regains strength and can pray himself again:

Firmly I believe and truly
God is Three and God is One;
and I next acknowledge duly
manhood taken by the Son.
And I trust and hope most fully
in that manhood crucified;
and each thought and deed unruly
do to death, as he has died.
Simply to his grace and wholly
light and life and strength belong,
and I love supremely, solely,
him the holy, him the strong. . . .

And I hold in veneration,
for the love of him alone,
Holy Church as his creation,
and her teachings as his own.

And I take with joy whatever

Now besets me, pain or fear,

And with a strong will I sever

All the ties which bind me here.

Adoration ay be given,
with and through the angelic host,
to the God of earth and heaven,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. . . .

Finally the priest prays for him at the departure of his soul from his body--and Newman has adapted prayers that I find at the back of my 1962 Roman Missal--and Gerontius dies and then awakens in the afterlife, his soul able to think and perceive without a body, without the senses as he used them on earth, and yet feeling more himself than he did on earth, with greater freedom:

I went to sleep; and now I am refresh'd,
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes:—some one softly said
"He's gone;" and then a sigh went round the
room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry "Subvenite;" and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah ! whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain.
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have nought else to feed upon.

The Soul tries to comprehend the timelessness of his new being and location--then his Guardian Angel comes to help him understand and to guide him to judgment:

Thou art not let [prevented]; but with extremest speed
Art hurrying to the Just and Holy Judge:
For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
Divide a moment, as men measure time,
Into its million-million-millionth part,
Yet even less than that the interval
Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
Cried "Subvenite," and they fell to prayer;
Nay, scarcely yet have they begun to pray.

They pass by the Demons on their way to the Judgment Seat and the Soul realizes how impotent they really are, having feared them so in life. The five Choirs of Angelicals sing, culminating in the Christological statement, summarizing the truths of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery:

Praise to the Holiest in the height
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail; 

And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God's Presence and His very Self,
And Essence all-divine.

O generous love! that He who smote
In man for man the foe,
The double agony in man
For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Should teach His brethren and inspire
To suffer and to die.

The Soul rushes to see Jesus the Judge, hears his fate and returns chastened and ready to endure purgation. Newman depicts purgatory, not as a fire, but as a "golden prison" with souls ready to greet him; as entering night to be awakened by day. The Soul's Guardian Angel gently lowers him into the waters, the lake of purgatory, promising prayers in Heaven and Masses on Earth:

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.

"The Dream" for/of Gerontius may have been his life on earth--as Newman said in his Apologia pro Vita Sua about his youth, he "thought life might be a dream, or I an Angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a playful device concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world." 

Gerontius's real life has just begun because now he knows the reality of his life with God. He has also learned how that "dream", his life on earth has prepared him for this new, eternal life!

While it's a great work of art--that's why Gordon, Swinburne, Kingsley, Doyle and many others were moved to praise it whether or not they believed in the Four Last Things as the Catholic Church has taught them--it still has a didactic purpose, reminding Catholics:

1) To pray for a happy death, receiving the Last Rites and prayers of the Church;

2) To live so as to be ready to die, because we know neither the day nor the hour;

3) To pray for our beloved dead; attend Rosaries and Funerals in our parishes whenever we can, even if we don't know the deceased; to provide for Masses for ourselves to be said after death, etc.
4) To live and die as though we believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Preview: The Soul on the Way to Judgment in "The Dream of Gerontius"

On Monday, November 21, we'll continue our survey of highlights from Newman's The Dream of Gerontius on the Son Rise Morning Show. Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will discuss the Soul's progress to his judgment before God at about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live here.

Since November is the month of prayers for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, I have heard at least two sermons on the Four Last Things, and two of them for sure have cited Saint Paul's promise in I Corinthians 2:9, quoting Isaiah 64:4:

But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him. (Douai-Rheims translation)

And that verse seems an appropriate lens through which to view this next meditation on Newman's imaginative vision of the afterlife, as he describes Gerontius' Soul on the way to Judgement, already enjoying some of the peace and joy of Heaven.

The soul of Gerontius has just encountered his Guardian Angel, whose remaining duties are to lead him to the judgment-court, and to Purgatory and thence to Heaven.

Although Gerontius on his deathbed feared death and judgment, now his Soul does not:

Dear Angel, say,
Why have I now no fear at meeting Him?
Along my earthly life, the thought of death
And judgment was to me most terrible.
I had it aye before me, and I saw
The Judge severe e'en in the Crucifix.
Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;
And at this balance of my destiny,
Now close upon me, I can forward look

With a serenest joy.

So his Guardian Angel explains that it was because Gerontius had feared death and judgement during his life, and therefore had repented of any of the sins he'd committed:

It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear,
Thou hast forestall'd the agony, and so
For thee the bitterness of death is past.
Also, because already in thy soul
The judgment is begun. . . .

So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne,
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul
Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense,
And heaven begun.

At this point, I thought what if Newman had written a poem about an unrepentant soul, fearful on his deathbed, pleading for mercy, not really able to confess his sins, and with no time to make restitution for those sins? 

Would the un-Gerontius be greeted by his Guardian Angel singing Alleluia! and would that soul feel such calm and joy? I don't think so: It would be a completely different poem, filled with anguish and terror! 

But Newman did not want to wish anyone to go to Hell, not even a fictional character, because that's such a sin against charity, as our priest here in Wichita said at Mass last Sunday. No, Newman is giving us a model, even in a fictional character, of what a happy, holy death should be like--and what God has prepared for him because he loved Him.

Nevertheless, as his Guardian Angel leads the Soul to the Judgment Seat, he encounters some demons, who mock his humanity and striving for holiness. The angel explains that:

We are now arrived
Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl
Is from the demons who assemble there.
It is the middle region, where of old
Satan appeared among the sons of God,
To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.
So now his legions throng the vestibule,
Hungry and wild, to claim their property,
And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.

But this Soul is not going to Hell, even though he hears hints of what Hell is through the cacophony and impotence of the Demons' chant:

Virtue and vice,
A knave's pretence,
'Tis all the same;
Ha! ha!
Dread of hell-fire,
Of the venomous flame,
A coward's plea.
Give him his price,
Saint though he be,
Ha! ha!
From shrewd good sense
He'll slave for hire
Ha! ha!
And does but aspire
To the heaven above
With sordid aim,
And not from love.
Ha! ha!

In Newman's vision of the Four Last Things, Hell is represented by these demons, who mock salvation, the Church, the Sacraments, and all that is good. Although this Soul is bound for Heaven, he hears their horrible blasphemies on his way to the Judgment Seat.

Their voices, however, are soon replaced by the Choirs of Angelicals; from the chant of the Fifth Choir of Angelicals another hymn has been composed, "Praise to the Holiest in the Height":

Praise to the Holiest in the height,
and in the depth be praise:
in all his words most wonderful,
most sure in all his ways.

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
which did in Adam fail,
should strive afresh against the foe,
should strive and should prevail;

And that a higher gift than grace
should flesh and blood refine,
God's presence and his very self,
and essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he, who smote
in Man for man the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
and on the cross on high,
should teach his brethren, and inspire
to suffer and to die.

These five Choirs of Angelicals contradict entirely the rude chants of the demons, stressing human dignity based securely on the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of Jesus, as the Angels have recounted the history of salvation, the reality the demons cannot accept. As Father Juan Velez explains:

The history of salvation reaches its climax with Christ’s redemptive suffering, which Newman wishes the reader to contemplate. Christology becomes the key to a proper reading of eschatology. As in his other works, the author has a Christological approach to the Holy Trinity, ecclesiology, sacramental theology and morality. In the Dream, the passion of Christ is the measure of God’s mercy. Newman shows Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane as the reference point from which man should realize the gravity of man’s sins and the need for forgiveness. The Incarnate God is the One who will be man’s judge. Christ is the second Adam who suffered in His flesh to obtain man’s recovery[ ].

In our concluding discussion on November 28, I'll highlight some themes from the Soul's Personal Judgment and his entry into Purgatory. In the few minutes we have each Monday, I can only give you glimpses of this great poem--you have to read it yourself and perhaps listen to Elgar's dramatic, semi-operatic work to appreciate it fully.

Saint John Henry Newman's prayer for a happy death:

O my Lord and Savior, support me in my last hour in the strong arms of Thy Sacraments and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me; and let Thine own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious saints and my own dear patrons smile upon me, that, in them all and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Christ the Judge and Praying Angels by Giovanni da Milano

Image Credit (Public Domain): The angelic choirs circling the abode of God, from Dante's Paradiso, illustrated by Gustave Doré. Hint: Think of the two figures in the foreground as the Soul of Gerontius and his Guardian Angel!

Preview: The Composition and Publication of the "Dream of the Gerontius" in 1865

Before Edward Elgar set the text of Newman's Dream of Gerontius to music in 1900, of course, Newman had written that eloquent poem about death, judgment, Heaven, and hell in 1865, 160 years ago this year. 

So, since two weeks ago on the Son Rise Morning Show we featured the Elgar anniversary, this coming Monday, September 8, we'll look at the composition and publication of Saint (Doctor) John Henry Newman's poem itself in 1865. (The Son Rise Morning hosts were busy the week before at the EWTN Radio Conference in Washington, DC and took the Monday, September 1 Labor Day holiday off!) I'll be on the air at my usual time around 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Newman's other most famous poem is "The Pillar of the Cloud", better known as "Lead, Kindly Light". He wrote that poem and many others while he was travelling with his friend Hurrell Froude in Italy and the Mediterranean. He wrote those verses in the Romantic mode as defined by William Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800): as ". . . the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity", reflecting on his experiences on that journey.

Newman wrote this poem, the longest we have of his, on 52 scraps of paper between January 17 and February 7, 1865. There was a sudden inspiration and an urge to write it--and a definite end to the inspiration. One of his biographers, Wilfrid Ward, describes its composition:

Now, after the abandonment of the Oxford scheme [to found an Oratory for Catholic students, who could at last attend Oxford] gave him leisure for it, he set down in dramatic form the vision of a Christian's death on which his imagination had been dwelling. The writing of it was a sudden inspiration, and his work was begun in January and completed in February 1865. "On the 17th of January last," he writes to Mr. Allies in October, "it came into my head to write it, I really can't tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly." To another correspondent [The Rev. John Telford, priest at Ryde] also, who was fascinated by the Dream, and longed to have the picture it gave still further filled in, he wrote:

"You do me too much honour if you think I am to see in a dream everything that is to be seen in the subject dreamed about. I have said what I saw. Various spiritual writers see various aspects of it; and under their protection and pattern I have set down the dream as it came before the sleeper. It is not my fault if the sleeper did not dream more. Perhaps something woke him. Dreams are generally fragmentary. I have nothing more to tell."

As I wrote in an earlier post about this poem, Newman was able to turn away from controversy and difficulties to contemplate eternal truths:

Perhaps after such strain of confusion, controversy, and confrontation, it was restful to contemplate the certainties of God's justice and mercy when a man dies. No more secrecy and indirection; the soul meets Jesus, knows Him, knows himself, and looks forward to being with the Holy Trinity and the saints in Heaven after his purgation. Newman explored the Church's dogmatic teachings about death and judgement, heaven and hell in a mystical, dreamy poem, harking back to his childhood love of fantasy and wonder--his sense that life was somehow a dream--while reflecting his assent to the certainties of divine revelation and his faith in the reality of God. He also includes liturgical and devotional prayers for the dying and the death, including the Litany of the Saints and the Proficiscere prayer ("Go forth, Christian Soul") in a supremely, confidently Catholic poem.

Although though it is "a supremely, confidently Catholic poem" The Dream met with ecumenical approval--even his former defamer Charles Kingsley liked it! William Gladstone and Algernon Charles Swinburne, the decadent school poet, admired the poem's verse and power. Francis Hastings Doyle, the Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, gave a lecture on The Dream of Gerontius in 1868. News that General George Gordon, "Chinese Gordon", had a copy of the poem with him at Khartoum--and that he had annotated it--when he was attacked and killed in January 1885 gave the poem even greater notoriety. As Father Ian Ker of happy memory noted in his biography of Newman, "interest in the fate of Gordon of Khartoum" was so intense that William Neville transcribed Gordon's annotations into copies of The Dream of Gerontius (p. 741).

The Dream of Gerontius was then published in the May and June issues of The Month, a periodical founded in 1864 by the convert Frances Margaret Taylor (Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Poor Servants of the Mother of God). The Jesuits in England bought The Month in 1865 and Father Henry James Coleridge, another convert (great nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), became the publisher and editor.

So the 160th anniversary of this poem is worth remembering as the work continues to have its impact artistically and theologically. It may not always be, as Francis Hastings Doyle commented, the greatest artistic success, but it has perdured through the decades through its beauty and depth.

[In 2022, throughout the month of November, Matt and Anna and I went through The Dream of Gerontius in as much detail as we could in our Monday morning segments!]

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!