By Mark Emerson Donnelly
Composer-in-Residence
The Abomination of Desolation
On the afternoon of Thursday, November 19th, 2020, I was preparing for Offertorium’s evening rehearsal. Nothing extraordinary about this, except that I got a text at about 5 pm from one of the singers asking if anything had changed about rehearsal due to the announcement by British Columbia’s chief health officer about 30 minutes earlier. What was her announcement? All in-person public worship was cancelled, effective the next morning!
We were preparing for the Mass of the Last Sunday after Pentecost. In the Gospel for that day, Our Lord tells His disciples to watch for the “abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Matthew 24:15).
What was this “abomination of desolation”? It was the order by King Antiochus IV in the second century BC, outlawing the Jewish temple sacrifice of the lamb to the one true God, and, likely, instituting in its place a sacrifice to pagan idols. But in this passage from the Gospel according to Matthew, Our Lord was telling His disciples to watch in their own time (the first century AD) for the abomination of desolation. This is most often interpreted as a reference to the destruction of the temple and all of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Roman general (later emperor) Titus. Was this a different abomination or the same?
Fast forward to today. The public attendance of THE sacrifice of the Lamb (at Holy Mass) is being outlawed in my home province. Is there a new Antiochus, a new Titus? I’ll leave that for you to ponder. However, as Matthew’s narrative continues, Jesus says: “He that readeth, let him understand” (Matthew 24:15).
St. Paul, in the first century, wrote: “Let us consider one another, to provoke unto charity and to good works: Not forsaking our assembly, as some are accustomed; but comforting one another, and so much the more as you see the [latter] day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25). This was at a time of extreme persecution of Christians. (Remember the Church was not given official sanction by the state until Constantine in the fourth century.) Yet, St. Paul encourages them to meet. Hmm …
Three weeks ago, it was warm and sunny at our home in White Rock, British Columbia, unusual for December. We were having some exterior home repairs done, and Mike the roofer was thankful for a pleasant day. Many of our neighbours were out for walks, with hardly a mask to be seen among them: young, old, mothers pushing baby strollers. Everything seemed normal. Not a new normal, just normal; the only normal there is.
It made me think of old war movies. Though the films were in black and white, the characters in them lived in colour! Whether or not you think the COVID-19 protocols are useful or necessary, most people (except the officials who flaunt their privilege) find them to be an arduous burden. But WE still LIVE in COLOUR. So even as we see that “upon the earth [there shall be] distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and the waves: men withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world” (Luke 21:25-26), there is beauty all around us. As the title of the TV series and book by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen proclaimed, “Life is worth living!”
This takes me back to the Last Sunday after Pentecost and the abomination of desolation. This is pretty heavy stuff. If this abomination is an ongoing thing – the time of the prophet Daniel, of Our Lord, and even now – we can’t simply wither away in fear, expecting the end of the world! We must meditate on it, yes, so we are ready for the second coming of Christ, but we also have to consider (and give thanks for) the gifts that God has bestowed upon us.
Darkness and Light
If I may call upon my insight as a composer, I think, perhaps, that is the inspiration which moved William Byrd (1543-1623) to write his double motet “Ne irascaris, Domine” and “Civitas Sancti tui.” The text, from Isaias 64:9-10, reads:
Be not very angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity: behold, see we are all thy people. The city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, Sion is made a desert, Jerusalem is desolate.
Pretty dark, eh? It is probably a text upon which Byrd meditated frequently; he was composing at a time when it was illegal to be a Catholic in England. In fact, it is believed that Byrd saw such biblical texts as particularly applicable to the persecution of Catholics in his day. His collection of motets, Cantiones Sacrae, of which “Ne irascaris, Domine” and “Civitas Sancti tui” are a part, were very likely written as an ode to the suffering of his English Catholic community. Byrd himself was fined and jailed for attending Mass. Friends and colleagues were executed in the Tower of London.
But if you listen to Byrd’s setting of the text, you find it sublimely beautiful. If you did not know the meaning of the words, you may think it is about the Beatific Vision! But it is not. It is about our sin and the desolation of the Holy City. What Byrd does is provide a meta-message, so to speak. Despite the grim picture the prophecy paints, the music conveys a comforting hope; a hope that transcends, that defeats, any desolation.
However, from a practical standpoint, there’s one difficulty with Byrd’s double motet; it’s in FIVE parts! This provides a gloriously rich vocal texture, but most church choirs consider themselves blessed if they have even ONE strong singer in each section (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) to carry things. Usually, the weakest of the four is the tenor. (Yeah, that’s the part I sing!) And Byrd’s setting has TWO tenor parts. Yikes!
This is where I come in – not as a singer, but as an arranger.
My thought was that this music was too beautiful not to be sung more extensively, just because the singing forces weren’t available. Given what I stated above about most church choirs, and out of our own necessity a couple of years ago, I decided to mix the Secunda Pars (second part), “Civitas Sancti tui,” down to the standard SATB (soprano/alto/tenor/bass). In preparing for the Mass on November 22, 2020, I decided to complete the arrangement of the double motet and apply the same treatment to the Prima Pars (first part), “Ne irascaris, Domine.”
Then we were hit with the public edict: No Mass, no mas! (apologies to Roberto Duran).
Well, back to rehearsal. I asked Offertorium if they would be okay recording the arrangement in order that I might share it with my readers. They agreed.
In the video below, interspersed with shots of the sheet music, are images that, I believe, reflect the text, both biblically and according to our current day.
A PDF score is available to anyone signed up for my newsletter. It’s printable and the margins are tablet-friendly!
I hope the beauty of Byrd’s original version shines through sufficiently in my arrangement. I also hope you’ll accept this as a Christmas gift, not only from me, but from my family, and the singers I have worked with closely for many years: Veronica Roenitz, Ed De Vita, Christopher Suen, and Gabriel Uy.
Keep praying for the restoration of public worship and a return to normality. Don’t be afraid of death. As Jim Morrison sang, “No one gets out of this alive!” (except in the supernatural sense).
Merry Christmas, and may God bless you abundantly in the New Year!
Mark
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