Need Hymn Tunes for the "Office of the Sacred Heart"
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Hymns are:

    O Heaven’s glorious King
    Heart, worthy Throne of Godhead
    O heart! love’s victim, slain!
    Choice Cabinet of our Lord!
    O may we ne’er provoke
    Love did this refuge win
    O, wond’rous pow’r of love
    The Mother to her Son

    Does anyone have these or know if they are online?

    tnx in advance!
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045

    Texts are here:
    https://archive.org/details/TheDevotionAndOfficeOfTheSacredHeart/page/n375/mode/2up
    And here: https://www.littleofficeofthesacredheartofjesus.com/hours/prime/#content-top.
    This gives the Latin hymn texts as well, which might be easier to find melodies to, though Gregobase was coming short for the several I checked:
    https://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Filius/OPSCI.html

    The English texts have remarkably bad scansion.
    I haven't found tunes at hymnary.org, but I only checked a few.
  • RoborgelmeisterRoborgelmeister
    Posts: 138
    The translations are in Short Meter. S.M.

    St. Michael (Genevan, abr.) came to mind.

    Some stanzas are fine; others appear to need revision.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    apparently this dates back to the mid 1800's, and i am wondering if any of the hymn tunes ever survived.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045
    I've got the book Sacred Heart Hymns, compiled by R. S. H. and published by Willig in 1889, and they aren't in there.

    Did this ever become popular as a group devotion? We may be assuming that a thing called "hymn" was intended to be sung. But if somebody said these individually or as a family, they may not have bothered. The metrical issues in some of these stanzas would have made singing them a challenge.(Likewise, but oppositely, if the the rubrics say "The Credo is said", that doesn't mean you can't chant it.)

    Also, you're looking at this from a modern perspective of a hymn having a specific (or several specific) tunes. American Protestant churches in the 18th and early 19th c. made do with a limited number of tunes (<20), and Catholics may not have been different.<br />
    Is your goal here musicology, or worship? If it's musicology, I don't know of a solution other than searching through period Catholic hymnals until you get a match. Or, failing that, finding SM tunes in common use in the period that could have been used. If it's worship, you have more options. If you want to jump-start a revival of this devotion, you'd be better off using tunes that modern people might know, since they'll have a hard enough time with these words.
    Thanked by 1Don9of11
  • Don9of11Don9of11
    Posts: 684
    I looked through Higginson's "Handbook of American Catholic Hymnals" and none of these hymns are listed. It might help to know what the first line of the text is. Often times hymns are listed with different hymn names but can be identified by the verses.

    I have been compiling a list of hymns to the Sacred Heart which includes 125 Catholic Hymnals so far (1848-1964). I have the hymns listed by hymn name and first line of the text, plus a few other particulars but I don't see these hymns

    I also have a small hymn book "For the use of the Pupils of the Sacred Heart" Roehampton 1928, and your hymns are not listed in this little collection.

    You might contact forum member oldhymns. He has been very helpful when locating hymns.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Thanks for the info y’all.

    The hymns I listed are indeed the first lines.

    We have a newly inaugurated Sacred Heart Devotion Group and I am putting a publication together for us with prayers and hymns.

    Here is the site with the content.

    https://www.littleofficeofthesacredheartofjesus.com
    Thanked by 1sdtalley3
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