The Liturgy of the Familiar

I had three very different musical experiences Sunday--all made better by knowing conventions, patterns, and traditions.

Sunday AM, sudden onset of illness meant that Ann and I did the music accapella (sp?) This is one of those times when you are glad you've sung with someone for awhile--we were able to match volume, timing & phrasing, picking initial notes, etc. We were joined at the last minute by someone from a different choir in our Parish; I think he might have gotten lost a couple of times with our "doc-o-rized" versions of Mass parts.

Sunday afternoon, Mom & I went to our local big Catholic church for a choral concert. A friend of hers, who sings in the local choral society, got us tix. We heard sacred texts in settings by Randall Thompson (Texts for Isaiah), Igor Stravinsky (The Symphony of Psalms in Latin) and then the Fauré requiem. I'd sung the Requiem a few years ago for a Good Friday service. I watched Mom reading the translations of the texts and I wonder when she'll ask more questions about "freeing the souls of the faithful from the punishment in the inferno." We don't talk so much about faith differences right now...

Fauré's version of the Requiem has a shortened version of the Dies Ire in the Libera Me verse. At the beginning of the verse, as the choir sang:

*Libera me, Domine,
de morte aeterna,
in die illa tremenda,
quando coeli movendi sunt et terra,
dum verneris judicare
saeculum per ignem.

Lightning flashed and thunder shook outside of the church. As they began:

**Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo
dum discussio venerit,
atque venture ira.
Dies illa, dies irae,
calamitatis et miseriae,
dies magna et amara valde.

Fire trucks and what sounded like ambulances went by the church. Even before the theme was repeated, I found myself thinking:

***Requiem aeternam
dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

My evening ended as Izzy and I went to a house concert featuring an old friend and a new acquaintance: their duet project is Little Windows. They beautifully blended traditional Irish music with "old time" (pre-bluegrass) folk and mountain music, evoking tears in English and Gaelic. On old, unfamiliar hymns, the audience sang along, in 4 & 5 part harmony, to songs they'd just heard for the first time. The conventions, the liturgy, as it were, carried us along. What a great experience!

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Translations from the concert program (apologies for any mistakes)

*Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death, on that dreadful day, when the heavens and earth shall move, when You come to judge the world through fire.

**I am made to tremble and fear, at the destruction that shall come, and also at Your coming wrath. That day, day of wrath, calamity and misery, great and exceedingly bitter day.

***Rest eternal, grant them, Lord, and may perpetual light shine on them.