lutheranhymns | Entries tagged with pentecost/holy spirit

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Interesting cultural mashup here; the melody is a Swedish folk tune, but the text is originally in Spanish from a 20th-century Argentine lyricist.

The translation is pretty decent, but there are a few rare/jargon-y verbs that come across a bit strangely. The end of the first verses is "que fecundaste la creación" - "that [inseminated??] creation"? "that made creation fertile"? It gets translated as "bearing the creation to wondrous birth." (Spanish seems to be slightly less dense than English in that you need more syllables to get the same point across, so sometimes English needs to "pad" with miscellaneous adjectives.)

The corresponding line in the third verse is "que consagraste la creación," which becomes "sighing with creation for freedom's birth." The verb "consagrar" literally translates as "consecrate," (or "dedicate," "confirm," "devote"...) either way the sighs and freedom are a stretch. If you add an extra n, however, "consangrar" would mean something like "to bleed with" (as in labor pains? struggling together?) which is probably just a coincidence but that's how I wanted to parse it the first time!

On that note, we're done with this section.

Another very repetitive Taizé chant. At least the sopranos (and altos and tenors) alternate between two different notes. The basses get less than that.

Now, to its credit, there is also a part for a soloist that can be sung on top of this with the chant echoed quietly in the background. Is that part, with its more interesting melody and text, reprinted here? No, it is not.

The alto part is fairly complex here! Lots of accidentals, rhythms more interesting than the sopranos, and it gets down to low G. The basses have something similar, both in lowness and moving-parts complexity. Shannon density is fairly low, as all of the verses have the same first and last line.

The hymn tune name is "Herr Jesu Christ, Meins" which looks like someone got a few syllables into the translation, and then got bored and stopped in the middle of the phrase. Every once in a while, you'll get a verse that's a legit "run-on" in the sense that the sentence doesn't end, it just continues into the next verse, but I think the fact that the punctuation is missing from the end of verse 3 here is just a typo.

My choir sang an arrangement of this to a melody called "Danby," which my director summarized as "it sounds like O Waly Waly ['The Water Is Wide'], but it's not that one."

This has nice non-sexist language without being too preachy about it; the Holy Spirit is personified as a dove in "her flight," combining the images of Jesus' baptism and the feminine Wisdom. Interestingly, the tune name is "Bridegroom," which has nothing to do with the text, but is used in a parable describing Jesus as the husband of the church as a whole. Maybe a different text that originally went with it?

This is a plainsong chant from the late 1600s (we'll run across it again later); the text is from 1974. I mean it as a compliment to say that the text actually does seem to "fit" the old-school tune, in that the lyrics feel timeless (Latin-singers back in the day probably said things like "Eternal Spirit") and the stresses flow well together (it's not a translation, which helps).

This is in the "Pentecost/Holy Spirit" section, and begins by addressing the titular entity. By the third verse this has slid into "O Christ, your love in me." Which is (to me) a slightly odd way of going from the third to the second person of the Trinity without lingering on the first. I get that they're all the same, but this section often just talks about the Spirit as its own thing without tying up Jesus and/or the Creator.

Are the feminine rhymes pretty impressive?

Yeah, I'd say so! witness/fitness? nourish/flourish? Even the slant ones like discernment/contentment are at least creative.

What language is it translated from?

Swahili! It's nice that they actually list that there so I'm not tempted to Google "languages spoken in Tanzania with lots of consonant clusters."

Are the altos getting a lot of D?

Yes.

(In the event my werewolf friends are reading this: hi werewolves. The seers are watching.)

Have we heard this melody before?

Yes, it's Cwm Rhondda, aka soccer fans' parody favorite.

Does this also have the "evermore" echo part?

Sadly no.

Is the Holy Spirit associated with tempests and blazing?

Yes, in the Pentecost story the spirit comes like "tongues of fire" on people's heads with the sound of "a mighty wind."

What about earthquakes and thunder?

Less directly. I think that might be an allusion to a later story in Acts where an earthquake breaks Paul out of jail, but I'm not sure if that one is as explicitly linked with the Holy Spirit at work.

"Lustrous"?

Shiny!

Based on Hildegard of Bingen?

German nun and mystic from the 1100s. Famous in some nerdy circles for creating her own language (in her case mostly nouns, but still pretty impressive for the 1100s). Her saint day is September 17th (again, also mostly commemorated in said nerdy circles).

Is the alto part pretty boring?

There are only eight measures and one of them is the same note four times in a row, so I'm gonna say yeah.

Is the Shannon density somewhat low?

Yes. The first two lines are fairly repetitive from verses 1-4: "Holy Spirit, _*_ divine, _*****_ of mine," usually with a "this" somewhere in the second blank. Verse 5, however, we get "Holy Spirit, right divine," but then it swerves to "king within my conscience reign." Ouch at the rhyme scheme.

Was the lyricist, Samuel Longfellow, kind of gay?

Maybe not in so many words, but he was included in a hymn festival celebrating gay and lesbian composers. Apparently his idea of a good time was to go for a retreat in the forest with one of his close male friends and edit hymnals together, so even if he wasn't gay, he was definitely a big nerd.

He is also famous for being the brother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, famous US poet. I recommend the latter's "I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day," and "Excelsior," which has been dismissed for being too cheesy by modern standards, but is right up my alley.

Is the alto part pretty boring?

I'm actually gonna go with no, it moves around a lot. The reason this is a valid question is because there are only eight measures and one of them is the same thing over and over, which is a fairly significant fraction.

Is it appropriately gender-neutral?

Yes; it addresses the Holy Spirit as "like a mother," "like a father," and "friend and lover." The father verse is maybe the cutest, although it doesn't go along with the traditional imagery of God the Creator as a father; instead it says "hoist me up upon your shoulder, let me see the world from high." I don't think that's a particular allusion to anything Biblical, but, dawww.

Does this count as a praise song?

I'm...not sure? It has the chorus/verse motif that is a little more common in those. And it was written in 1978. I don't think it's all that "peppy," though. It's thoughtful, I like it!

What about the rhymes?

The verses are fairly straightforward. The chorus has the internal-ish assonance of "gentleness/wilderness//restlessness/placidness," which yeah, the "ness" is the common factor, but the specificity is great. (How many times do you come across the word "placidness" in your daily life?)

Who or what is the Holy Ghost?

Usually referred to as the "Holy Spirit," the mysterious third "person" of the Trinity (God the Creator, Jesus, and...everything else). Some older translations have "ghost" instead of "spirit" in the sense that...it's non-physical I guess, but that's a fairly dated usage and mostly just gets used for the rhyme scheme these days. (Since this is a German translation, it's cognate to "Geist," which is maybe less archaic? It's by Luther in the 1500s again, though, so who knows. I don't actually speak much German.)

Is the Holy Ghost also referred to as holy Fire? (See verse 3).

Yeah. So Pentecost (50 days after Easter) commemorates the beginning of the church community as a multilingual organization; according to the Bible, the Holy Spirit landed on the apostles like wind and fire on their heads.

What about holy Light? (Verse 2).

That's a new one on me, but it wouldn't be a Luther original without a bunch of verses.