Three Days; M.D. Ridge, Roman Catholic, OCP publisher, THAXtd
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    A self-taught, grandmotherly guitar picker, children's RE teacher and musician from W.Virginia best known for PARABLE, M.D. Ridge stunned me about five years ago with this hymntext. It seems to have also impressed many, as I've seen it programmed on many ordos at Catholic Answers Forum. What think y'all?

    1.Three days our world was broken; the Lord of life lay dead.
    “Take up your cross,” he told us who followed where he led.
    Would we now hang in torment with thieves on ev’ry side,
    Our Passover shattered, our hope crucified?
    Three days we hid in silence, in bitter fear and grief.
    Three days we clung together where he had washed our feet.

    2.Three days-and on the third day, the women came at dawn.
    His tomb, they said, was empty, his broken body gone.
    Who could believe their story? The dead do not arise,
    Yet he walks among us, and with our own eyes
    We’ve seen him at this table; we’ve share his bread and wine.
    Hearts burning bright within us, we’ve seen his glory shine.

    3.Three days our world was broken and in an instant healed,
    God’s covenant of mercy in mystery revealed.
    Two thousand years are one day in God’s eternal sight,
    And yesterday’s sorrows are this day’s delight.
    Though still Christ’s body suffers, pierced daily by the sword,
    Yet death has no dominion: the risen Christ is Lord!

    13 13 13 11 13 13
    c1999
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Love it. Programmed it for Easter Sunday this year, and it's existence prompted my (apparently well received) Ascension hymn on the same tune.

    Actually- I knew the tune prior, but this was still the impetus for inspiration.

    In fact, I had really wanted to use the tune for something, and I thought the Easter Season was a perfect time, so I had thought about trying to write something (I never wrote even one word). I asked my brother if he happened to know any good texts to THAXTED that I could use during the season, at which point he pulled his printed programs out from that year, saying "you mean like this...?"

    After having toyed for a couple years with a going-nowhere metrical setting of the Magnificat to this same tune, I got a first draft of the Ascension text done in an hour or less.
  • Ally
    Posts: 227
    Also love this text! Used it Easter Sunday as well, and again on Ascension.
    Next year we'll add brass!!
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    and again on Ascension.

    but... but....
    Thanked by 1Ally
  • Ally
    Posts: 227
    I didn't have the Ascension text early enough!!! Also, used several other hymns on Ascension. I will use your text next year, I promise :)
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,388
    It's a good text. The principal flaw is that the fourth line has eleven syllables instead of thirteen. The missing syllables matter a lot to me.

    I'm not opposed to changing the meter of some tunes. I think SLANE works OK either as a 10 10 10 10 or 10 11 11 12 tune. LLANGLOFFAN, ELLACOMBE, and several other CMD tunes work OK as 7676D tunes.

    But I believe until M.D.'s text came along, THAXTED has been consistently used as a 13 13 13 13 13 13 tune (except for "I Vow to Thee," the first text set to the tune, written a decade or so before the tune was; it has several added syllables in the last few lines of the final stanza).

    What tempers my dislike of M.D. 11-syllable fourth line a little bit is the fact that the fourth musical phrase and the one preceding it are different from the other 4 musical phrases of the tune. Musical phrases 1, 2, 5, and 6 all have the same note durations and the same slurred eighth notes. Phrases 3 and 4 are different from the other four, and different from each other. However, since the ending of phrase 4 has two eighth notes with separate syllables - as do phrases 1, 2, 5, 6 - M.D.'s changing the meter would have been somewhat more successful had line 4 contained 12 syllables, providing two syllables for those two eighth notes. But then there's that remarkable dotted-eighth and sixteenth note feature which begins the fourth musical phrase--
    Upon further reflection, no, the meter of the tune should not have been changed.
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    I used Adam's text again on the Friday after the Sunday-that-would-have-fallen-in-the-Octave-of-the-Ascension-if-we-still-had-one after the evening Mass. Wish I had recorded it. I haven't heard them sing like that since Adeste Fideles. It seems to be a hit!
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    It's a good text.

    The remainder of your analysis, Fr., is math, metric. Can you deal with the meaning of "good" as opposed to superlative, banal, errant, redundant or great?
    I think one of the reasons it occured to me to put it up here is that it, like the Dunstan hymn, restates the circumstances of archetypal paschal events in immediate terms, or as if in first person.
    Are you feeling constrained because of professional courtesy, or it's just "good?"
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    restates the circumstances of archetypal paschal events in immediate terms, or as if in first person

    That is part of what I like about it.
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,388
    The remainder of your analysis, Fr., is math, metric. Can you deal with the meaning of "good" as opposed to superlative, banal, errant, redundant or great?
    I think one of the reasons it occured to me to put it up here is that it, like the Dunstan hymn, restates the circumstances of archetypal paschal events in immediate terms, or as if in first person.
    Are you feeling constrained because of professional courtesy, or it's just "good?"


    Charles, it's just "good." The change of meter in line 4 is a serious flaw, in my opinion. And, no, no professional courtesies are involved.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Fair enough, thanks.
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