Name that Sanctus!

Last week, the organist wanted to pick a new Sanctus and so did a run through with interested members of the congregation. I knew most of them and so sang them (from memory — not sight-reading) so the others could get an idea.

The constraint was that it should be Rite I and from Hymnal 1982. We’d been singing the Proulx (S125) but people noticed that the Rite II words didn’t match the rest of the Rite I service (including what we say for the Sanctus if there’s a substitute organist.)

For our church efforts and this blog, I decided to do a Sanctus inventory, spending a few hours flipping through the back of H40 (both the 1943 and 1981 editions), the front of H82 and various other sources.

As is the custom in most American Anglican (or TEC) parishes nowadays, we use the combined Sanctus/Benedictus (“Blessed is He”) rather than ending on “O Lord Most High” as was the norm 40-70 years ago, when I was growing up and when Hymnal 1940 was produced. In fact, it wasn’t until the Supplement II edition of H40 (1981) that my favorite hymnal got the longer version of the Sanctus.

I’ve been accused of being biased against H82 (I’d rather think of it as it as a fair assessment of its strengths/weaknesses) but the reality that a) even more than for hymn melodies, service music chants are a matter of personal taste and b) both hymnals have included some dubious choices, where you say “why did they do that?”

In fact, it appears that one of the main reasons for a new hymnal nowadays is for the hymnal editors to put their friends’ (or personal favorite) hymns into the book and perhaps generate some royalties. There is evidence of this not just in H82 but also for H40 and the Lutheran Service Book.

To be fair, Hymnal 1982 has a disadvantage that to my knowledge no previous hymnal ever faced: the church couldn’t decide on a common liturgy, so there are separate settings for each of the two variant rites. (In a stroke of remarkable bad timing, the 2006 LSB went with the unfortunate “Also with you” just before the CCT and RCC (partly) corrected this error by switching to “And with your spirit.”)

The upshot:

• The original H40 has seven settings of the Sanctus: four complete communion services (Merbecke, Willan, Oldroyd and the Douglas/medieval plainsong settings) as well as three additional settings of the Sanctus alone. The Supplement I (1961) adds four more complete settings: Sowerby, Bodine, Waters, Shaw. Overall, this means 11 settings of the Sanctus, plus (after 1981) a Sanctus/Benedictus version of the 8 primary communion services.
• H82 offers five Rite I settings (S113-S117). It reprints (with tinkering) the three most widely used (and IMHO best) settings (Merbecke, Willan, Douglas) for Rite I, supplemented by two others: one from the C.W. Douglas Missa de Angelis and one that James McGregor claims to have adapted from a 16th century mass by Hans Leo Haßler.
• In H82, these five Rite I settings are joined by (count ’em) 11 Rite II settings (S121-S131). (Does this perhaps hint where the hymnal committee’s priorites lay?) Among them are late 20th century settings by McGregor, Proulx, Martens and Hurd — names that show up repeatedly in the S-section of the book.

In our singoff at church, the Willan was very familiar and was briefly the favorite. This was the one I sang every week as a boy soprano in the pro-cathedral choir. Despite my medievalist biases, I think it has earned popularity far beyond mere familiarity. Willan is North America’s greatest Anglican composer and (after Vaughan Williams) probably the most important 20th century composer of Anglican church music. The one gripe (again legitimate) is that it requires a wide range that would be easier for the choir than the congregation.

One that was also familiar was the Merbecke from The Book of Common Praier Noted (1550), the first English language setting of the mass. Unlike the 1662 prayer book — or the 1928 where it was optional — the first Anglican Sanctus included the Benedictus, matching the words of the original 1549 BCP:

Holy, holy, holy, Lorde God of Hostes: heaven (& earth) are full of thy glory: Osanna, in the highest. Blessed is he that commeth in the name of the Lorde: Glory to thee, O lorde in the highest.

The Merbecke is a great choice, but our rector veto’d it as too somber for all but the penitential season, which he defines as including Lent but excluding Advent.

So we probably would have gone with the Willan until a new parishioner chimed in “What about the Schubert?” I had to admit she had a point. During my Lutheran days, I’d previously sung the English translation of the Sanctus with the setting from his 1827 Deutsche Messe (D.872). Unlike most service music (notable exception: the Scottish Gloria), it has a beautiful and singable harmony — of great personal concern now that I’m decades removed from my boy soprano days.

As with a lot of other Romantic era compositions, the piece a tendency to be sappy but I think our organist will avoid that. Listening German and English versions available on YouTube, the two are quite different. The German original is very slow (literally Sehr langsam, 3/4 with 50 bpm) which wouldn’t be sappy but would probably be too slow for weekly worship use.

The other problem for us is that Schubert is published by H82 (S130) as part of the 11 Rite II majority rather than the 5 Rite I minority. The H82 words are the Rite II favorite:

Holy, holy, holy Lord
God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory
Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the highest.

Taking the German

Heilig, heilig, heilig, heilig ist der Herr!
Heilig, heilig, heilig, heilig ist nur Er!
Er, der nie begonnen,
Er, der immer war;
Ewig ist und waltet, sein wird immer dar
Allmacht, Wunder, Liebe, Alles rings umher!

from Yahoo and other sources it appears that a more accurate translation would be:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!
Holy, holy, holy is He alone!
He, who always was
Is eternal and reigns, and will be forever.
Eternal, and prevails, will be accessible is
Omnipotent, miraculous, love all around!

So no “Power and Might.” But then the Luther text used by Schubert is not the same as the English translation of the Latin.

The words and music were adapted by Richard Proulx, who is described by his Facebook group as follows:

Richard Proulx (1937-2010) was a widely published composer of more than 300 works, including congregational music in every form, sacred and secular choral works, song cycles, two operas, and instrumental and organ music. He served as a consultant for such denominational church hymnals as The Hymnal 1982 (Episcopal Church), New Yale Hymnal, the Methodist Hymnal, Worship II & III, (Roman Catholic Church), and has contributions in the Mennonite Hymnal and the Presbyterian Hymnal. Proulx was a member of The Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church and was a founding member of The Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians. 

On the one hand, Proulx had a front row seat to get his music into H82. On the other hand, he seems to be solely responsible for taking the Sehr Langsam Sanctus in German and adapting it for congregational singing in English. Another hymnal lists it as 1985 — the same copyright date as on p. 930 of H82 — while an entire arrangement of the mass by Proulx was published in 1989.

So we have a piece out of copyright for more than a century, with a new arrangement that includes a non-literal translation. It appears there is only one version of this arrangement that uses the Rite II rather than the original BCP words. (Too bad the question didn’t come up before he died in February, or we could have emailed him.)

The Rite II words, derived from the ICEL texts, are now considered obsolete by the Catholic church. Instead, consistent with the other liturgy changes, English speaking Catholics will soon revert to Cranmer’s original 1549 words stripped of the thees and thous:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

I’ll be curious to see if the AMiA, ACNA and of course TEC will adopt the more accurate text, and thus bring along the service music with it. One distinct advantage is that the Rite I/II then become a syllable-for-syllable equivalent and thus could use identical settings.

If he were alive, we know that Proulx — as the former organist of the Catholic cathedral in Chicago — would have updated his Sanctus for the Vatican-approved text. One eulogy called him “one of the last great composers within the Catholic milieu who came of age in a time before commercial-style pop music came to dominant American parishes” while another called him “the leading champion of traditional Catholic church music post–Vatican II.” He sounds almost like a 20th century John Mason Neale.

Kyrie eleison

On Sunday, we were back at our home parish again for Trinity V. As with our first visit to this parish, the liturgy and music captured what was best about the high church Episcopal worship of our childhood — enough to make us forget about the foolishness being promulgated this week by the TEC as it prepares to leave the Anglican Communion to form its own new religion.

It was our first Sunday back since before Pentecost — six weeks gone due to travels, a confirmation, college graduation and a youth sporting event. Apparently the choir was off for Trinity IV (4th of July weekend), so everyone was in good spirits to have the great liturgical music back.

I certainly enjoyed singing the harmony on the closing hymn, #564 (Lyons, as arranged by J. Michael Haydn). With gusto (too much gusto for my wife) I belted out the closing phrase in the closing stanza, sung with ritardando for emphasis: “[The soul that to Jesus has fled for repose] … I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.” However, despite this rousing finish, this was not the most moving aspect of the familiar (yet long-separated) 1928 BCP liturgy.

Actually, the highlight was the plainchant (service music). Our music director likes to rotate the plainchant based on the season. In the Sundays after Trinity — what our rector calls “normal time” — we are using the oldest plainchant in the hymnal, the Latin chant that predates the Reformation and the creation of the Church of England and the vernacular mass (with the 1549 BCP) in the 16th century.

As far as I can tell — and I need further study — Hymnal 1940 may be the first Episcopal (or perhaps Anglican) hymnal to include a choice of service music: I could not find it in my three English hymnals — Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861), The English Hymnal (1906) or Songs of Praise Enlarged Edition (1931) — nor in the PECUSA Hymnal 1916.

According to Hymnal 1940 (and the Hymnal 1940 Companion), our hymnal has four settings of the chant for Holy Communion:

1. by John Merbecke, hymns #701-707, arranged and published in 1549-1550 in Booke of Common Praier Noted;
2. by Healey Willan, #708-713, composed in 1928 by the Canadian composer and choirmaster;
3. by George Oldroyd, #714-718, written by the Yorkshireman in 1938; and
4. by the anonymous "Fourth Communion Service", hymns #719-724, attributed to a variety of ancient or medieval sources.

I’ve never (ever) heard the Oldroyd used in 40+ years of PECUSA/Anglican attendance. I grew up with the Willan, perhaps because the choir director of our high church PECUSA parish wanted to emphasize how hip he was. While the Willan is among the best 20th century music in Hymnal 1940 (or 1982), in my opinion it’s still third to the two settings used by Anglicans for more than 400 years.

The historic Merbecke setting is worth a posting in and of itself. Today I want to concentrate on the anonymous medieval setting we used Sunday, based on the earlier (pre-BCP, pre-COE, pre-Reformation) Latin settings of the Catholic church:

719. Kyrie
720. Credo
721. Sanctus
722. Pater Noster
723. Agnus Dei

(On Sunday, we did not sing #724, the 15th century Sarum Rite Gloria. At our Schism I parish — like a LCMS and a TEC parish where I used to attend — the preferred Gloria the “Old Scottish Chant,” hymn #739; the Hymnal Companion calls it a setting that has been popular in America since its publication in 1809.)

Let me quote from the Hymnal Companion and its explanation of the “Fourth Communion Service”:

719
The Kyrie, which attains, both in mastery of music form and in beauty of conception, the highest level of perfection reached by mediaeval melodic music, is a 12th century development of a setting at least 100 years older in its original form.

720 Credo
This is the ancient and all but universal melody of the Creed…
…
722 Pater Noster
This traditional music of the Lord's Prayer is uneqionatinably part of our oldest musical inheritance. … It is almost identical with a Hebrew cantillation of Zechariah 2:10 … Thus it may very well be a musical tradition from the primitive Judaeo-Christian communities.

723 Agnus Dei
This setting is a 13th century version of an earlier tenth century melody.

Certainly the Credo and Pater Noster — which appear to be the most commonly used tunes at American Anglo-Catholic parishes — have a unique place in the modern American hymnal. They are shared across time and place — with other centuries, other Christian denominations, a common and timeless bond in our fragmented, schismatic and sinful world.

When I returned to PECUSA (not yet TEC) as a young man, I found the corporate worship of these two chants (plus the spoken Confession) to be the most moving part of the Communion service. These three places are still the points which often pull me back out of my reverie, to remember the whole point of our Sunday worship.

However, I have to agree with the committee that authored the Hymnal 1940 and its Companion. As a plainsong chant, among all the available communion services the Kyrie reflects “the highest level of perfection,” crafted by some unknown composer(s) some 900 years ago during the High Middle Ages.

The Kyrie is even more moving when sung (as written) antiphonally, as is the Agnus Dei. We have a small choir, but at some point I would like to persuade our music director to attempt it, as this simple gesture (reflecting the intentions of some long-lost church musician) increases the impact of this timeless melody.

Update: C.W.S. correctly notes the role of H40 editor Charles Winfred Douglas in reviving plainsong in the hymnal. In fact, this 4th setting in H40 is credited by Hymnal 1982 to Douglas himself, as composing or at least adapting it in his 1915 composition Missa Marialis.