The pastor at my parish has requested that we sing "Anima Christi" for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. I knew of only one tune with the Latin words and sang part of it for him, but he said it wasn't right. A short while later, a young girl started singing William Maher's Soul of my Savior and Father said "That's the tune! They'd sing the Latin words though." He said that he thinks that a version like that is probably available online, but so far I've been unsuccessful in locating one.
Does anyone have a copy with the Latin words that they could share or know where I could find it? I still have time to put it together on my own, but figured it didn't hurt to check here first.
Well, since "Soul of my savior" has a regular metrical structure (10 10 10 10), but the "Anima Christi" text in Latin is not in a regular meter (10 7 9 10 9 8 11...), it would take some potentially awkward stretching and shoehorning to fit the Latin text to Maher's melody. His tune wasn't meant for that text, and I wouldn't recommend pairing them, FWIW.
Thank you for pointing that out, CGM. And thank you Ben and Liam, for the links. I'll speak with my pastor about it, since he said it had been done in Latin at a parish where he used to be. God bless!
Thank you, Steve! Father's commented before on how he likes Ostrowski's work, so that might work. (We'll be singing it during communion, so I'm not concerned about the congregation having trouble singing it.)
"Anima Christi" fits okay to "Soul of My Savior," if you are willing to elide a few syllables or spin out others. The only difficulty is the "in saecula saeculorum, Amen" bit. I don't know if that is best practice, but it is reasonable.
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