Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today’s morning Gospel lesson centers around St. John the Baptist, who sent his own disciples to Jesus to ask “Are you the one who is to come or shall we wait for another?”
There is a relative paucity of musical materials for St. John the Baptist, but a particular hymn text stands out: the chant Ut queant laxis. This is the hymn for Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and is ascribed to Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century, with a chant thought to have been composed by Guido d’Arezzo, a 11th-century Italian Benedictine monk who is said to have invented the lined staff, and whose name is associated with a device for learning solmization (applying syllables to pitches of a scale) by utilizing the hand (with its joints and fingers) as a sort of mnemonic device: the Guidonian Hand.
Nearly 600 years later in Venice, Claudio Monteverdi wrote a lovely duet version of this hymn for soprano and alto, two violins, and basso continuo (the instruments playing the bass line and harmonies of the music). A translation of the three verses used in Monteverdi’s song are included below.
I trust you will find this music a beautiful expression of this prayer to the Forerunner of Christ, St. John.
Yours in Christ,
—Justin
Ut queant laxis, from Selva morale e spiritual, Claudio Monteverdi
For thy spirit, holy John, to chasten
Lips sin-polluted, fettered tongues to loosen;
So by thy children might thy deeds of wonder
Meetly be chanted.
Scarcely believing message so transcendent,
Him for a season power of speech forsaketh,
Till, at thy wondrous birth, again returneth
Voice to the voiceless.
Praise to the Father, to the Son begotten,
And to the Spirit, equal power. possessing,
One God whose glory, through the lapse of ages,
Ever resoundeth.
Amen.
