Singing to angels and arcangels

The Feast of Michaelmas

The feast of St. Michael is celebrated on Sept. 29 by the liturgical Western churches. The celebration of St. Michael dates to 5th century Rome on Sept 30, and on Sept. 29 from the 7th century onward. In England, Michaelmas was once one of the major English quarterly holidays (along with Christmas, Lady Day and Midsummer), and was traditionally celebrated by a feast with a fatted goose.

The Catholic church today remembers the three archangels named in scripture: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael. In the Anglican church, the feast is for St. Michael and All Angels. This is also the observance of the Lutheran church, which kept it despite dropping so many other Roman holidays; as an LCMS writer explains:

At the time of the Reformation, the Lutherans revised the celebration of former holidays and saint days in order to give greater prominence to the work of Jesus. St. Michael and All Angels was retained in the Lutheran liturgical calendar because it was seen as a principal feast about Christ. In fact, Philip Melanchthon, a colleague of Dr. Martin Luther, even wrote a hymn about St. Michael and All Angels (LSB 522, “Lord God, To Thee We Give All Praise”).

At first, this might strike us as strange. How is a feast named after an archangel about Jesus? But as with all commemorations within the Lutheran Church, the focus is not on the person but held in grateful thanksgiving to our Lord for using this person (or His holy angels) to give glory to His name and to bring about salvation for His people. The event celebrated on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels is thus important both in regard to our salvation and to the comfort it brings the Christian conscience.

The website Text This Week helpfully lists readings for Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran congregations. All agree on the appointed reading for today: Revelation 12:7-12, telling how St. Michael leads the victorious battle in heaven. (I would probably still be chanting this Epistle today — as I did 25 years ago — if we hadn’t changed churches).

Anglican Hymns

I had trouble finding familiar hymns with texts that fit today. The LiturgyTools website has a list of hymn (most of which I don’t know), but perhaps the most obvious hymn (for “All Angels” if not St. Michael) is a Victorian hymn:

Ye holy angels bright,
who wait at God's right hand,
or through the realms of light
fly at your Lord's command,
assist our song,
for else the theme
too high doth seem
for mortal tongue.

I remember it from childhood because it is the last hymn of the first edition of Hymnal 1940 (600), it is also the last hymn of Book of Common Praise 2017 (#639); it is also found in The English Hymnal (#517); the New English Hymnal (#475) and Hymnal 1982 (#625). The tune is Darwall’s 148th, published by John Darwall in 1770, with a wonderful four part harmony. Hymnary.org says it’s found in 95 hymnals — basically Anglican hymnals worldwide — but not in Catholic or Lutheran ones, and only the earliest (1933) US Methodist hymnal. It has a descant by Sydney Nicholson, published both in Hymnal 1982 and the Oxford Book of Descants.

This hymn is recommended for this day in Hymnal 1940, as is “Ye watchers and the holy ones” (H40: 599, H82: 618; BCP17: 637). While this connection to the feast day seems less direct, this hymn is also found in Catholic, Lutheran, and Methodist hymnals (for those that still use hymnals). The tune is Lasst uns enfreuen, from a 17th century German Catholic hymnal and harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams. There is a descant by Christopher Gower in the Oxford Book of Descants, while my own music director (J. Davis Simmons) has written his own magnificent descant.

Hymnal 1940 lists four hymns for the feast day:

120. “Around the throne of God,” written by John M. Neale, and set to the (quite singable) 1873 tune Abends.
121. “Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright,” a 9th century Greek text translated by Neale in Hymns of the Eastern Church, set to Trisagion, a tune composed for this purpose and published in the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern.
122. “Angels and ministers, spirits of grace,” by Percy Dearmer in his 1933 Songs of Praise, Enlarged Edition (one of the few hymns from this hymnal that made it into H40). It is set to the Irish tune Slane; two different descants are in the Oxford Book of Descants. 
123. “Christ the fair glory of the holy angels,” the official office hymn for this date — a 9th century Latin text translated by The English Hymnal and updated by H40. It has a choice of two tunes: Christ Sanctorum (a Sarum plainsong) and the 17th century Coelites Plaudant.

The New English Hymnal has only one text — the latter — with Iste Confessor (also a plainsong) and Coelites Plaudant. Book of Common Praise 2017 also retains only this one text, but with the tune Supplication by W.H. Monk (music editor of Hymns A&M).

For once, Hymnal 1982 does not have the widest selection of hymns for saints’ days. For the office hymn, it retains Coelites Plaudant (#282) and adds a second plainsong (#283), Caelitum Joseph (adapted in 1983 by Schola Antiqua). The other text it has is “O ye immortal throng of angels” (#284), a text by Philip Doddridge) set to Croft’s 136th.

Lutheran Hymns

With DuckDuckGo, I also found a Lutheran website with hymn suggestions for this date: the Free Lutheran Chorale-Book. It writes

The most well-known is Paul Eber’s “Lord God, to Thee We All Give Praise” (“Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir“), 1554. It appears in The Lutheran Hymnal, 1941, as No. 254, “Lord God, We All to Thee Give Praise,” and in the Lutheran Service Book, 2006, as No. 522, “Lord God, to Thee We Give All Praise.” Eber’s German hymn is a paraphrase of a Latin composition by Philipp Melanchthon, “Dicimus gratias tibi” (“We give thank to Thee”), 1543. The tune, which in the Lutheran chorale tradition is known as “Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir,” is well known among English speakers as “Old Hundredth” due to its association with the metrical setting of Psalm 100 in the Geneva Psalter. 

Hymnary lists 22 (18th and 19th century) hymnals with the German text, and 18 (Lutheran) hymnals with the English text, including the current LCMS and WELS (but not ELCA) hymnals. However, the text is more generically about angels than specific to St. Michael.

It mentions a second hymn, the 17th century “Aus Lieb läßt Gott den Christenheit,” but that was only published in the U.S. in an 18th century German Lutheran hymnal by C.F.W. Walther.

I pulled out my copy of the 1941 The Lutheran Hymnal, and it offers its own assortment of hymns that overlaps H40:

254. “Lord God, we all to thee give praise,” set to Old Hundredth.
255. “Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright,” set to O Quanta Qualis, a 17th century plainsong tune.
256. “Around the throne of God,” set to Winchester New (a descant is available in the Oxford Book of Descants).
257. “Jesus, brightness of the Father,” a 9th century text translated by Edward Caswall, set to Neander (a descant is available in the Oxford Book of Descants).

The latter two familiar tunes seem a great way to get Anglicans to sing these lesser known Anglican texts.