With apologies, I’m running a day late here. The song I chose for Shrove Tuesday (16 February) was “O Lord, my heart is not proud” by Margaret Rizza. This is a short setting of verses from Psalm 131, and I chose it because it is a psalm of turning back to God, which is very much the theme of this day in the Christian calendar. It’s short enough to be quoted in full:
O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor haughty my eyes.
I have not gone after things too great, nor marvels beyond me.
Truly I have set my soul in silence and peace;
at rest, as a child is in its mother’s arms,
so is my soul. (translation copyright 1963 The Grail)
There is no attempt here to force the words into a set rhythm or rhyming pattern, this is essentially a prayer to be reflected on, equally well spoken as sung. It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:6, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” It’s a reminder that in prayer we do not come to God boasting of our achievements, but rather aware of our limitations. Also that the ideal attitude for prayer is to seek silence in God’s presence and to relax into conversation with him (hopefully not falling asleep, but I don’t believe God minds if we fall asleep in his presence, any more than a mother minds if her child sleeps in her arms).
As Stephen says, this song is a simple way of singing the text of the Grail Psalter to a tune; and I accept it on that basis. There are ways of rewriting the text into a rhythmic form with a rhyme structure, but Margaret Rizza decided not to do that. Instead she has concentrated on making the music fit the natural speech-rhythms of the words, and I think the piece succeeds in this.
Although the music is set out in 4-part harmony, in fact the harmonic arrangement has several weaknesses in its writing: parallel octaves between tenor and bass across the words “my soul” and between soprano and tenor across “and peace”, parallel fifths between alto and tenor across “after things” and “too great”, and divisions of the altos into two parts in a few places. One can only deduce that the piece is really conceived of as a melody with accompaniment; and is not really for singing by an unaccompanied four-part choir, in which these defects would stand out. I am a bit uneasy about this, in view of the paragraph on page ix saying “We have kept the interests of choirs in mind …”.
Of course Stephen is entirely right about the words and their use on Shrove Tuesday.