Adoro te - extra syllable
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    Has anyone ever considered that the best rendition of “Adoro te” may be, rather than singing extra syllables, to sing more like:

    ’doro te devote

    ??

    The rest of the text follows a pretty strict trochaic pattern that the way this hymn is printed in most hymnals seems to violate.

    Alternatively, what about putting the extra note at the beginning?

    I’ve always thought the way hymnals print the first verse of this hymn is just wonky. When I looked at it more closely, I started to think the hymnals are perhaps “wrong”. Has anyone else had thoughts on this?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    Well, it never seemed wonky to me. I'm partial (as anyone might suppose) to the translation in 'the 1940', though G.M. Hopkins' is also not to be bettered. My complaints with regard to this spiritual song is with people who present translations that savage the music, as in presuming to offer us two syllables instead of one on the clivises and podatuses, and so on. John Mason Neale would never have done anything so careless.

    Your suggestion about putting the extra note at the beginning really does have merit.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    I've occasionally seen and personally advocate combining/eliding the second and third syllables of Adoro, something like: "A-d'ro te de-vo-te." This is not at all unlike the way that one combines the two syllables of "spirit" in the Tallis "If ye love me": "E'en the sp'rit of truth."
    Thanked by 1Chris Hebard
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Treat it like a pick up and lift the word accent. It's much simpler to sing than go the analytical route.

    Don't get me wrong- I love analysis. However, it seems to me that this particular minor issue is really easy to overthink.

    I advocate leaving the first note with the syllable "a" and treating it as a sort of pick up note also because, unlike the Tallis example, it only happens at the very beginning of the poem. The particular word "adoro" does not seem to lend itself to dropping the first syllable. I'd say that a more elegant singing approach would be to render the word in such a way as not to lean into or "thud" the first syllable but rather respect the word accent as it moves toward the phrase accent.

    I am in agreement that this is awkward to our modern sensibilities. And I personally find that type of thing to be one of my favorite challenges.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    "Anna Crucis, Anna Crucis, I adore you....."
    It's a metric hymntext. Da only way would be as a "pick up."
    We should be talkin' "digitus....."
  • MichaelDickson
    Posts: 419
    I am in agreement that this is awkward to our modern sensibilities. And I personally find that type of thing to be one of my favorite challenges.


    I suppose it depends whose modern sensibilities are in question. I was exposed to an awful lot of (and some, certainly not all, of it pretty awful) multi-metered music growing up, and even did a short stint as an arranger when my task was to make 4/4 (or 3/4) music into something else, metrically speaking (by rewriting it in 7/8, adding some bars of 5/4, or some such). Some of it worked well; some not.

    But I have absolutely no problem with the extra beat at the beginning of Adoro Te. Indeed, I relish it, and I, personally, feel that I was cheated when it is swallowed up by slavery to 4/4 time. (Anyway, it's just one beat! The thing quickly settles into 4 after that.)

    This isn't a comment of any sort on anybody else's sensibilities, of course.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    My spirituality professor, who wrote a book on the prayer of St Thomas Aquinas, told me that the original word was something other than Adoro and had 2 syllables.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen M. Jackson Osborn
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    Well, what was it???
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    'Doro.

    :)
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    Maybe the tune was borrowed from a secular topic?

    Let's guess St. Thomas' actual first word: I'll take Oro.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    I shall have to find out. My vote is Laudo.

    By the way, the critical Latin edition has latens veritas--rather than "latens deitas."
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    Interesting, Kathy. I was not aware of the latens veritas version, but it accords well with The 1940's version (likely by Canon Winfred Douglas) which reads, 'humbly I adore thee, verity unseen...', whereas Hopkins' 'Godhead here in hiding...' parallels, obviously, latens deitas.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    In addition, the critical Latin edition has "Adoro devote, latens veritas." No "te." Apparently, there exist two similar but different versions.
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn chonak Ben_Whitworth
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    Wonderful, thanks!
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    I highly recommend Fr's. book, by the way.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,509
    Chuck, is the critical edition online?
  • JonathanKKJonathanKK
    Posts: 542
    You can find examples with "Adoro te supplex."

    Which would explain why the melody inserts its extra syllable during "devote".
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    I have tried to check the Cantus database but could not find this Hymn...

    Well I have looked at the CMAA scan of 'Hymns of the breviary and etc.', Britt.
    Britt suggests looking in the Catholic Encyclopaedia,
    " The same work contains seven articles on the hymns of St. Thomas. These articles, listed under the following titles, are from the pen of the eminent hymnologist, the Rt. Rev. Monsignor H. T. Henry, Litt.D.: Lauda Sion, Adoro Te Devote, Sacris Solemniis, Pange Lingua, Tantum Ergo, Verbum Supernum, and O Salutaris. Monsignor Henry's Eucharistica contains translations of all these hymns and devotes to them more than thirty pages of comment,"

    Link to Cath Encycl, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01154b.htm
    Link to Eucharistica, Henry
    (link should lead directly to the comments on this Hymn pg. 220.)
    https://archive.org/stream/eucharistica00henruoft#page/220/mode/2up

    Britt also writes,
    "Trochaic trimeter catalectic. The first line has a syllable of anacrusis, i.e., an upward beat before beginning the regular meter. TRANSLATION by Justice John O'Hagan. There are about twenty-five translations. The Adoro Te Devote is found in the "Thanksgiving after Mass" in the front part of the Missal. A part of it is frequently sung in Benediction. It is an excellent example of rhymed prayer expressed in the simplest language."


    There is one more book on Hymns I will look through, I will add any relevant comment from this later!
  • Chris HebardChris Hebard
    Posts: 124
    I've always liked the elision "Ad'ro" that Mr. Giffen describes.

    On the other hand, Connelly's Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (1956), says to treat the current text as a pickup (anacrusis). He speculates that the first two lines were originally:

    Adoro devote, latens deitas.
    Te qui sub his formis vere latitas.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Britt:
    The first line has a syllable of anacrusis, i.e., an upward beat before beginning the regular meter.

    Moi:
    "Anna Crucis, Anna Crucis, I adore you....."
    It's a metric hymntext. Da only way would be as a "pick up."

    Do I win anything? Signed photo of Meloche? Bueller, Bueller....?
    Thanked by 2gregp tomjaw
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    When it comes to the Roman Breviary there is one book on Hymns that should always be consulted, Connelly's Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (1956). Like Bede, Connelly had the fortune to be able to read the great commentaries, and so by standing on the shoulders of giants thus see further. N.B. the great commentaries on hymns include Britt, Daniel, Julian, Henry, Walpole, and for the Dominican Rite, Byrnes.

    Chris Hebard quotes only a small part of Connelly's comments on this Hymn... here is the main commentary.

    The 'Adoro te' is usually attributed to St. Thomas, but there are serious grounds for doubting this.
    Only three of the MSS which contain this hymn are older than the fifteenth century, and they belong to the fourteenth century. The early biographers of the saint and the early Dominican tradition are, I believe, silent on St. Thomas as author of this hymn. Two of the early MSS, those of Klosterneuburg and Paris, say that St. Thomas composed it (or, according to others, recited it) after he had received the Viaticum on his deathbed - a moment described in detail, without any mention of this hymn, by Guglielmo de Tocco.
    Some have also thought that there are divergencies of though and expression between the Summa of St. Thomas and the 'Adoro te'. The theologian who wrote 'In hoc sacramento null set deceptio' and 'In hoc sacramento veritatis sensus non decipitur circa ea quorum judicium ad ipsum pertinet' would they think scarcely have written, even in poetry, 'Visus, tact's, gusts in the fallitur'. On the other hand there is the strictest possible correspondence between the Summa and the 'Lauda Sion'.
    Moreover the workmanship seems different from that of St. Thomas, and the feeling of the hymn, beautiful though it is, seems to reflect quite a different soul from that of the writer of the last verses of each of St. Thomas's compositions.
    There is then some case against St Thomas being the author of the 'Adoro the' and Dom Wilmart, to quote but one authority, was very doubtful about it. The common opinion that he did write it may have been spread and confirmed by the Missal which, from 1570 onwards, included it among the thanksgiving prayers after Mass under the title Rhythmus S. Thomae Aquinatis. But so many other things in this part of the Missal are now thought to be wrongly ascribed that one may question this ascription as well.


    Connelly goes on to add that Aquinas Byrnes O.P. in his book on the Dominican Breviary Hymns gives St. Thomas as the Author with no discussion of the arguments for or against.

    While Connelly only suggests what the first two lines should be (see Chris H's post) other parts of the Hymn have variations...
    Line 8 "Nihil veritatis verb verius / Verbo veritatis nihil verius".
    Line 18. " Panis veram vitam praestans homini"
    Line 24. "Totum mundum posset ab omni scelere"
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn Adam Wood CHGiffen
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