Today’s hymn is Fintan O’Carroll’s “Alleluia, Father we praise you as Lord”. Both the chorus and verses have memories for me.
The chorus, or perhaps antiphon (congregational response) is the technically correct term, is a setting of the word Alleluia! sung four times and on its own is known as the “Celtic alleluia”. It is used in several churches of a more Catholic style, including one where I sometimes worshipped in London (St Luke’s Charlton), as the ‘greeting of the Gospel’. This is a tradition whereby the Gospel book is processed from the altar into the middle of the congregation to be read, as a symbol of God’s word coming among his people. By singing “alleluia” as the book arrives, we are praising God for coming among us. This is a reminder that when we talk of the “word of God” we mean not just the Bible, important though that is, but the very nature of God which is to communicate truth and love to the world he has created, most importantly when he was incarnated in Jesus Christ to whom the Gospel accounts bear witness.
As is noted in the hymn book, the verses are a setting of “Te Deum”, an ancient hymn of the Latin church. In it, everything created is urged to give praise to God. In the original this starts with the angels, cherubim and seraphim (the spirits surrounding God’s throne and his messengers). They praise him with the song “Holy, Holy, Holy” which is also sung at the Communion / Mass, although in this hymn setting it is “we” who praise God the Father in this way. They are followed by “the glorious company of apostles, the noble fellowship of prophets, the white-robed army of martyrs” – those who founded the Church and those who at a time of persecution were honoured for having given their lives for Christ. These praise God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. After that comes the song of the whole church in praise of Jesus as both man and God. The final section reminds us that he will come again as judge, although that isn’t explicit in the hymn setting.
The memory for me here is from my schooldays. I wasn’t a regular member of the school choir, but when it came to plans to perform Berlioz’s setting of Te Deum, the call went out for additional singers for a work that demands a large choir. Since I enjoyed singing hymns in assembly, I volunteered. The experience of rehearsing this great choral work helped draw me into both a love of classical music and a personal faith in Christ over the next few years. Sadly, I fell ill just before the performance and didn’t get the experience of singing it to an audience. But worship doesn’t need an audience, for in worship – alone or in a massed choir – we are praising God himself.
Thank you, Stephen, for the background to the fourfold “Alleluia” which punctuates this hymn – I feel sure you are right, for Christopher Walker, the composer of the music, once addressed the clergy of the Kensington Area of London Diocese over a 3-day residential conference which I attended as a curate. He made no secret of the fact that he worked for the Roman Catholic diocese, and that much of the music he presented was designed for various bits of liturgy. I feel sure that this tune was one of those used, although I can’t actually find it in the papers I saved from then. Moreover the other set of words to this music (in this hymn book at no. 233) is explicitly about the Word and is clearly designed to be used in the lead-up to the reading of scripture.
I think the music is appealing and uplifting, but I have to say that I’m a bit puzzled about the timings in the way it is set out. Surely there isn’t a call for an extra half-bar to be added between chorus and verse (the “9/8 bar”), nor for the missing out of the natural 8th bar of the verse before restarting the chorus? If only Christopher had had a drum kit in the music group of his church he wouldn’t have made such errors of timing! Anyhow, in singing it I corrected what he wrote: verse and chorus are both naturally supposed to occupy 8 bars!
Of the two (this one 200 and the other 233) I think the version at 233 is more honed to its purpose, and has the right dynamic for a Gospel Procession song. This one seems a bit arbitrary in the way it chooses what to include from the canticle and what to lead out, and maybe a bit long for use of the whole: somehow Te Deum requires a format in which the words can be strung together at greater density and showing greater coherence of thought, and I prefer the Christopher Idle version which we’re going to be singing tomorrow – both great words and a great tune. The Jasper & Bradshaw entry on Te Deum Laudamus (p109-112) is worth reading (too long to reproduce here) for it points up the detailed structure of the ancient hymn as having two acclamations: to God the Trinity (v1-8) and to God the Son (v9-13), followed by a “capitella” (v14-18) which consists of five versicles and responses from different Psalms. Somehow I feel that a responsible effort at translating an ancient hymn (or psalm) into modern English ought to respect the fact that the original text had a definite structure, and try to respect that structure in the translation; and that’s not something achieved by casting it in the framework of the Celtic Alleluia (in my opinion).
Finally, it’s a pity the hymn book couldn’t find a way of putting the whole hymn on one double page spread. It’s endlessly tiresome to the organist or pianist to have to keep turning the pages forward and backwards while playing a hymn – and this is one of the few occasions that this book lets its musicians down.