Having a hard time deciding on Latin or English for your Compline Kyrie?
  • jefe
    Posts: 200
    Since I'm still enamored by the imagery of the centuries-old Kyrie in Latin; but pulled kicking and screaming back to the King's English, I'll have it both ways. The second harmonization for women supplants the normal Kyrie and modulates to C major, for The Lord's Prayer (the third example) during Night Prayer. This works best in a very reverberant space.
    jefe
    Thanked by 2JulieColl Salieri
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Kyrie in Latin

    image
  • Same for
    quire
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    ^ (Except that 'quire' is a legitimate alternative spelling; whereas Kyrie is not Latin, it's Greek.)

    Musically, these are quite interesting. I'm just not sure the using both Greek and English simultaneously is necessarily a good thing - I would stick to one language or the other - having a fear that it might come out a "Kyhaverie merceleisos."
    Thanked by 1jefe
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Kyhaverie merceleisos


    Like 98% sure that's the Old Church Slavonic spelling.
    Thanked by 1jefe
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    I've provided the transliteration for your convenience:

    Кыхаверие мерселеисос
    Thanked by 3Adam Wood jefe Salieri
  • jefe
    Posts: 200
    Wow!...what a tough audience. I should (as in, woulda, coulda, shoulda) have said, "Kyrie used by the early Roman Church" for clarity. It seems the Romans stopped using the Greek Kyrie centuries ago in one of their format purgings. I simply like the sound of the Kyrie in Greek. Ictus abruptus. Such an organic, soul searching expression. My goal was to keep the listeners trying to justify two languages simultaneously, (Clint Eastwood's twitch comes to mind), as in, "speaking in tongues", with the more familiar English part in a slower drone-ish format, in subservience. Clint Eastwood's twitch comes to mind.This could work even if you started and stopped at different times together in the senza misura style of which we are so accustomed. Compline has a slower basic pace than the other offices, what with all that soothing time for "interior reflection and examination of conscience". I was just trying to pump the 'Mystical'; not here and now, envelope.
    I have a humbling expression I devised in college which still seems to work for everyone, especially myself:
    "We know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. But, we don't know that we don't know what we don't know."
    jefe
  • JesJes
    Posts: 576
    Thanks for these, I knew what you meant by latin ;)