Advent Introit Hymns

Adam Wood

Hey! Advent is right around the corner!!

Related to this thread.

I like the idea of Tietze Introit hymns a lot, but I don't care for the specifics of the execution.

What I like about the idea is:
-It's the Proper text. Hoo-rah!
-While the Offertory and Communion song/hymns can easily (well...) be replaced with Chants or other choral works, the *Processional Hymn* seems like a hard nut to crack.
-Having a Proper text set to a congregational hymn in the Protesant style seems like a very worthwhile thing in the world which deliberately and traditionally lives on the border between Catholicism and Protestantism (Anglo-Catholics; Anglican Use Catholics; High Church varietals of Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and others; etc...)

What I don't like so much:
-I can't say I particularly care for the way the texts are set poetically.
-Lots of hymn tunes I don't know. Which almost certainly means lots of hymn tunes most congregations don't know.
-Lots of uncommon meters, making it difficult to correct the above point through re-setting to another tune.
-Under copyright. So even if I had a tune I could set some particular text to, I'm not sure I'd be allowed to. Plus, can I put them in my programs? I don't know.

******SO, THEREFORE...******

In a fit of Ritalin-induced creativity (and thanks be to God for my new doctor, and his Rx pad), and inspired by Kathy's compliment, I wrote some hymn adaptations of the Advent Introits.

Things to note:

I set the antiphon in one stanza, and compressed the ideas of the Psalm verses into two stanzas. If you repeat the Antiphon after the two other stanzas, and then sing a metrical doxology, you've got a five-stanza hymn, which I think is just about right for a good processional.
These are VERY OBVIOUSLY PARAPHRASES. Sometimes I'm able to hew very closely. Sometimes I had to take liberties, which (of course) requires some interpretation of the underlying meaning. For that reason, I don't think that these satisfy "Option 1." I think of them as above-average Option 4.
I put all of them in LM (88 88). This is because:
- It's my favorite meter.
- It gives potential users a pretty wide variety of options, and could even allow someone to re-use the same melody and doxology throughout the season.
- I was thinking of Conditor Alme Siderum
This is a first draft. As always, suggestions and critiques are helpful.
I will likely release these under a Creative Commons license, but notice that I have not yet.
Given the speed of their production, I cannot vouch for the quality.

************************************

Advent 1 - Introit

My soul is raised, in Faith, O God,
Let not my trust be put to shame.
Let not the evil ones be pleased;
Save those who wait upon your Name.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
Guide me along your pathways true.
You are the God who saves my soul,
All through the day I hoped in you.

Your love, and your compassion, God,
Are from of old, have always been.
Remember, in your goodness, Lord-
remember me, forget my sin.

---
Advent 2 - Introit

O Zion, and your people, hear
The majesty of God's own voice.
All nations shall be saved by him
Who stirs your spirit to rejoice.

O shepherd, hear your people cry,
Shine forth and lead us by your grace.
Rise up in might to save your own,
Bring us to you, show us your face.

How long, O God of Hosts, how long?
How long shall tears be daily bread?
How long shall weeping fill our days?
How long, O Lord, this night of dread?

--
Advent 3 - Introit

Rejoice, all people, in the Lord!
Rejoice, I say again, Rejoice!
Be never anxious for this world.
In prayer to God, raise up your voice.

The captive children of our race,
You set them free from sin's strong hand.
You turned your wrath away, O God.
And led them to your promised land.

Bring us into that land, O God.
Let not our sin call forth your rage.
Show us your mercy, set us free.
Let mercy be from age to age.

--
Advent 4 - Introit

Like morning dew, the Just One comes.
From heaven He, like rain, descends.
And from the Earth, which bears him forth,
the Saviour of our race ascends.

The skies proclaim the pow'r of God,
The star shine forth the message clear.
Day unto day the sound goes forth,
Night unto night, til all shall hear.

Across the sky, the Sun shall race,
Rejoicing as it brings the day.
The morning of our joy has come,
the light of love will show the way.

---

Possible Doxology:

To God the Father, God the Son,
And to the Spirit, Glory be.
All praises to the Three in One,
All glory to the One in Three.

AJ in Toronto

This is very intriguing. Any chance you could do the same for the Advent Communion propers?

Heath

Adam, these look great! When is that "Hymn Texts for the Church Year" coming out from Kathy and yourself? : )

"The star(s) shine forth the message clear."

Adam Wood

Here's a thought, based on Kathy's suggestion over in that other thread.

Kathy

I like it!

It's interesting that the doxology is in the hymn tune rather than the psalm tone. I know that's not the traditional way, but I think it would work nicely. And given the number of doxologies in Church Meter, not a bad strategy.

This way seems much, much more liturgical, much less Geneva Psalter, than a completely hymn-tuned introit + Psalm. (Hey, if Auto-tune can be a verb, why not hymn-tune?)

Quibbling: what if the first line were simply, "I lift my soul to You, O God"?

Adam Wood

Or I could go with "To You, O God, I lift My Soul"
which would fit the meter and be (ya know) exactly the correct text.
Interesting... I wonder why I didn't do that yesterday.

Yeah, I wasn't sure about Doxology placement.
My thinking was something like "Parishes could do whatever they wanted..."

Heath

BTW, I knew this project sounded familiar . . . in addition to Mr. Tietze, my friend and colleague, Felipe Gasper (infrequent contributor to this forum) sent these along to me in 2006 (please note also the intriguing idea to sing these to "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"):

Introit hymns for Advent.

I took the psalm verses from Brady and Tate (online), with some modifications, and removed “thou” - thankfully, this didn’t cause problems.

Sung either to VENI EMMANUEL or CONDITOR ALME.

ADVENT 1

ANTIPHON (Ps. 25):
To You, O God, I lift my soul:
Let not my foes put me to shame.
Let no disgrace or scorn attend
Those who, O Lord, trust in Your name.

To me, O Lord, Your truth impart,
and lead me in Your righteous way;
For You are my salvation, Lord,
On You I wait all through the day.

(optional)
Your mercies and Your wondrous love,
O Lord, forever bear in mind;
And graciously continue still,
as You were ever, good and kind.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
To God we sing now and again;
From now unto eternity,
With all the heav’nly host. Amen.

ADVENT 2

ANTIPHON (cf. Is. 30:19,30, Ps. 80):
O Zion’s people, God shall come:
All earth shall know His glorious voice.
The Lord will come and save His flock;
Your hearts shall truly then rejoice.

O Israel’s Shepherd, Joseph’s Guide,
Our prayers to You vouchsafe to hear;
You who do on the cherubs ride,
Again in solemn state appear.

(opt.)
Behold, how Benjamin expects,
with Ephraim and Manasseh joined,
In our delv’rance, the effects
of Your resistless strength to find.

dox. & ant.

ADVENT 3

ANTIPHON (Phil. 4:4-6; Ps. 85):
Rejoice in God, again, rejoice!
Your kindness shall all men declare.
The Lord is near: be still, give thanks
Unto your God who hears your prayer.

Lord, You have granted to Your land
the favors that mankind implored,
And faithful Jacob’s captive race
have You now graciously restored.

(opt.)
Your people’s sins You have absolved,
and all their guilt have now defaced;
You have not let Your wrath flame on,
nor let Your fearsome anger last.

dox. & ant.

ADVENT 4

ANTIPHON (Is. 45:8; Ps. 19):
Like dew from heav’n, let justice come,
O let it rain down from the skies!
The earth shall open, all shall see;
Our glorious Savior shall arise.

The heav’ns declare Your glory, Lord,
Which all creation could not fill;
The firmament and stars express
Their great Creator's glorious skill.

(opt.)
The dawn of each returning day
fresh beams of wondrous knowledge brings;
From darkest night’s successive rounds
Divine instruction surely springs.

dox. & ant.

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

ANTIPHON (Is. 61:10, Ps. 30):
In God is all my soul’s delight.
He clothed me with salvation’s love
And wrapped me, like a bride adorned,
With truth and justice from above.

I shall proclaime Your praises, Lord,
Who did Your wondrous pow’r employ
To raise up my sore drooping head,
And check my foes’ insulting joy.

(opt.)
In my distress, I cried to You,
Who kindly did my grief relieve,
And from the grave’s expecting jaws
My hopeless life from there retrieve.

dox. & ant.

(I'll start another thread with these, as he has more to pass along, I believe.)

ghmus7

These are wonderful, all!
but does anyone know how to copy these into a document such as publisher and keep the formatting?
It just comes out as a block.

Ben_Whitworth

These are very good, Adam. The ones for the second & third Sundays of Advent are particularly strong. One small comment:

In Advent I, I think I would tend to hear the "save" in the fourth line as "save" in the sense of "except for". I don't know whether that's a peculiarly British English usage, but it would interfere with the intended meaning of the lines, for me. It could be avoided if the verb had a more obviously accusative object: "Save them who wait ..."?

I also like the idea of using existing metrical Psalm paraphrases, especially if they are ones that people may already know. I've thought about doing this with some of the traditional Psalms that are used here in Scotland (though alas ever less frequently) by the Presbyterians. The Scottish Psalms, though, can have the consistency of lumpy porridge. Tate & Brady, by contrast, remind me of rather weak tea; though I do quite like the "fresh beams of wondrous knowledge" in Heath's example above!

Adam Wood

I tried finding an existing metrical psalm translation, and found nothing that was both in Public Domain and sensible to modern ears. I've thought about doing my own in toto so they could be released CC. But, you know- ain't nobody got time fo dat.

The file above became the first draft of an ambitious, but now very back-burnered, "Flexible English Propers" project. Sigh....

BruceL

Thank you for this, Adam. I'm looking forward to checking these out more in detail. Maybe I've just been doing too much chant and polyphony lately, but these hymns make me with the English language had way more feminine endings! Bravo for your work!

Patricia Cecilia

Last year I took the hymn introit texts in Kathy Pluth's Advent Calendar and set them to three different tunes; they worked out wonderfully. At the Anglican church where I work, we normally chant the propers from The English Gradual (the psalmtone equivalent of Fr. Rossini's propers), but in Advent and Lent we process to the Great Litany or to the Decalogue (chanted) so we don't use the introits. So I decided to use them during the prelude time while the Advent wreath was being lit. We'd being singing various O antiphons at that spot, which worked well (even though some were early :-) but the hymn-tune introits to Kathy's lovely poetry were very well received (and very user-friendly i.e. not requiring much time while we were preparing the Mass setting we were using on Christmas Eve).

I am seriously contemplating using Felipe's texts to Conditor alme this year, which would do double duty when I'm working with my Catholic schola for the EF.

Ralph Bednarz

With a schola the entrance antiphon is not a

hard nut to crack?

The whole rite with its music and and procession, the role of the schola with or without the congregation singing is awsome. It foster a prayerful tone rather than pagentry.

hartleymartin

I have mixed feelings about hymn-tune introits. I think that a new hymn can be written, based on a liturgical text and psalm and that it can work well. "O God Our Help in Ages Past" is a paraphrase of a Psalm and it works reasonably well.

Perhaps what we really need to look at is a hymn-tune psalter, as most of the antiphons are taken from the Psalms anyway.

Kathy

Ok, I've been wanting to say this for ages so I might as well. Hymn-tune psalters are Protestant.

Adam Wood

I basically agree.

And my inclusion of metrical Psalm verses in the Flexible English Propers was essentially a concession to "Flexible." (Note: I only included them for the Introit, not the Offertory and Communion.)

I think Psalms make excellent hymn-text source material. But a metrical adaptation of a Psalm should be considered as a hymn in its right, and used when/where that is an appropriate genre- not used as if it was a Psalm, in the liturgical sense.

hartleymartin

Kathy - I essentially agree with you on this point. However, I do believe that they are an excellent source for material to write hymns. Several popular hymns are taken directly from collections such as the Scottish Psalter or the Genevian Psalter, which are essentially protestant things, but can be useful in Catholic Liturgy.

"All People That on Earth Do Dwell"; "O God Our Help in Ages Past" and "The Lord is My Shepherd" are three popular hymns which are just metrical adaptions of Psalm texts. I am sure that there must be dozens more excellent hymns which exist in the same format and style.

hartleymartin

Just another note: "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" has it's origins in the Cherubric Offertory Hymn from the Divine Liturgy of St James. Yet another great example of a hymn being based on a liturgical text. I tend to prefer this sort of hymn, though I will admit that there are many good hymns that I also play primarily because of the suitability of the text.

Unda_Maris

Adam, et al -- I'll add my 2 cents here for a psalm-based hymn tune as a processional hymn for Advent I: "To You, I Lift My Soul" (Ps. 25) -- John Ireland (LOVE UNKNOWN). This hymn-tune is set to a few texts, but this setting of Ps. 25 can be found in "Hymns, Psalms & Spiritual Canticles" hymnal (T. Marier) at #337.

Hope this is helpful.

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