Music, Poetry

Cecilian Ode #2: “Welcome to All the Pleasures”

In 1683, a new organization, the Musical Society of London, commissioned a setting of Christopher Fishburn’s ode Welcome to All the Pleasures for performance on St. Cecilia’s Day — November 22nd.  The Society chose Henry Purcell, 24 years old and already the organist at both Westminister Abbey and the Chapel Royal, as the composer.

Welcome to All the Pleasures proved a hit, with Purcell’s innovative use of the ritornello (a riff for strings punctuating a section of the work) and the ground (a repeating bass line anchoring vocal variations) causing quite the sensation.  Not only it was published the following year  — a rarity for an extended work in Restoration England — it became the first in a series of Cecilian odes commissioned by the Musical Society for their annual celebration.  Purcell wrote three more such odes before his untimely death in 1695, as did contemporaries like John Blow and successors like George Frederic Handel, often setting libretti by renowned poets such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope.

This year, St. Cecilia’s Day is also Thanksgiving Day in the United States.  Why not give thanks for the gifts of music and poetry by spending 15 minutes with Welcome to All the Pleasures?  The text of Christopher Fishburn’s ode follows below the playlist.

Welcome to All the Pleasures:

Symphony

Alto, tenor and bass: chorus: ritornello
Welcome to all the pleasures that delight
Of ev’ry sense the grateful appetite,
Hail, great assembly of Apollo’s race.
Hail to this happy place, this musical assembly
That seems to be the arc of universal harmony.

Alto: ritornello
Here the Deities approve
The God of Music and of Love;
All the talents they have lent you,
All the blessings they have sent you,
Pleas’d to see what they bestow,
Live and thrive so well below.

Two sopranos and bass: ritornello
While joys celestial their bright souls invade
To find what great improvement you have made.

Alto, tenor and bass: chorus
Then lift up your voices, those organs of nature,
Those charms to the troubled and amorous creature.
The power shall divert us a pleasanter way,
For sorrow and grief find from music relief,
And love its soft charms must obey.
Then lift up your voices, those organs of nature,
Those charms to the troubled and amorous creature.

Tenor: ritornello
Beauty, thou scene of love,
And virtue thou innocent fire,
Made by the powers above
To temper the heat of desire,
Music that fancy employs
In rapture of innocent flame,
We offer with lute and with voice
To Cecilia, Cecilia’s bright name.

Tenor: chorus
In a consort of voices while instruments play
With music we celebrate this holy day;
Iô Cecilia!

(This is the second in a series exploring the Cecilian Ode, a uniquely English poetic and musical genre that spans the centuries from the late 1600s to the present.  Check out Ode #1 here; look for a new ode on or about the 22nd of each month!)

— Rick Krueger

 

 

Poetry

St. Cecilia’s Day

St. Cecilia’s Day

Annals of the ages
preserve no evidence,
not a trace esconced
in the walls of titular tombs.

‘Twas her spirit that guided
the hand of history
to the bones of her testament

in her name,
carved in stone
of a sepluchre in the catacomb.

she lives,
enlivened by the virginal joy
not given over
to earthly ecstacy.

Hers, the empassioned embrace
of the sacrificial body.

Hers, the voice
ringing out the sweet sounds
of certainty.

A life, emboldened to stand
firm in the face of gallows,
flourishes,
runs free
into welcoming elysian fields.

The haunting gaze of conviction
urges us to run abreast,
yet fixed souls stand in awe
of such simple,
wondrous,
radiance.

This, the heart of the saint.
This, the incantation of eternal love,
a wordless aria
soaring to heaven.

And so she is here,
as present as you and I
as we, in unearthly voices,
sound the passing knell

to cast the thundering waves
of joy—the light engaged
to cast aside the trappings
that sustain the worldly
mammon and the madness

Faith and light and trembling
hope—the voice
sung out to angels,
the censorial sonance to the cold
hand of the rex legem

Condemned now,
the responding smile
opens the heart
to the flowing blood of truth.

There, the bejeweled
backdrop of gilded stones,
reveals the maiden betrothed,
not defiled.

Eyes cast aloft,
her soul ascends
through winds divine

and just below,
the angelic gaze,
a perfect alabaster nape
which twice and again
the henchman cleaved
but could not sever.

A final sign
of love revealed,
of three in one—
her love now sealed.

Kevin McCormick
22 November, 2018

Philosophy, Politics

Mises on Liberalism and Nationalism

An excellent article from my former colleague, Richard Ebeling.

Richard Ebeling

https://www.aier.org/article/ludwig-von-mises-liberalism-nationalism-and-self-determination?fbclid=IwAR0nDD7qk2izqkS7Jr3ZiJ1w97QZ4IGzlBBgrYSVniiNTJI9-g6XBmtHP_s

Republic of Letters

The Coming Bankruptcy of the American Empire | The American Conservative

I had the chance (privilege) to meet Hunter a year or so ago. He’s a truly fine young man with a great career ahead of him.

The Coming Bankruptcy of the American Empire | The American Conservative
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-coming-bankruptcy-of-the-american-empire/

Music

Culture, High and Low

Spirit of Cecilia twitter account says — “We love culture, high and low” — that does sort of mirror my interests. Reading and writing about classic Liberals, British and American — reading and writing about extreme metal, Scandinavian and American, tend to be my hobbies. Sort of occupying the two margins of culture — ancient and high, and then what some would term as low and loud I guess.

Thanks to Prof. Birzer for inviting me, and providing another platform to convey ideas.

Republic of Letters

By Way of Introduction…

1 Comment

thejoshuatree_gatefold_640.jpgEarlier this year, I was surprised and honored to be asked by the National Recording Registry of the United States Library of Congress to write a short essay to accompany one of the works listed, U2’s landmark 1987 album The Joshua Tree. As a way of breaking the ice on my contributions to Spirit of Cecilia, I thought I would share that essay here. Writing it gave me the opportunity to re-connect, in a somewhat limited and wistful way, with a band that has meant a lot to me over the years. The last couple of U2 albums, despite a few great moments and the occasional flashes of brilliance, have left me cold. I was further disheartened by U2’s glib, corporatist support of the unlimited abortion license, which was deftly (and devastatingly) critiqued by Irish journalist and playwright John Waters over at First Things. This is the kind of terrain I am most likely to cover on this blog, trawling the megahertz  in search of Godly inspiration in the devil’s music.

Politics

Why Facebook’s Long Reign May Be Coming to an End – Foundation for Economic Education

1 Comment

Sears and Blockbuster fell because neither was able to adapt and grow with its consumer base. Facebook has routinely gone against the wishes and needs of its users and is just now starting to face the consequences.
— Read on fee.org/articles/not-too-big-to-fail-why-facebooks-long-reign-may-be-coming-to-an-end/

Spirit of Cecilia note: This is an excellent article. Indeed, one of the best I’ve seen on the issue. I don’t know Brittany Hunter, but I look forward to reading everything else she writes.

Music, Books, Poetry, Film