CE St Peter’s Eaton Square, London [R] Wed, 28th April 2021

[Magister Chori]

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Ye choirs of new Jerusalem and the Responses were a lovely tribute to the recently departed Richard Shephard. It was a pity, though, that we missed the trumpeter in the anthem, not indicated as optional in the score.

A second version followed - also printed by OUP - with the accompaniment re-scored for solo organ: https://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music...ductID=1634708
Surely less effective than the original, but it's Shephard's own original transcription.

A particular mention for the fine and gentle new setting of the evening canticles.

[Keraulophone]

A second version followed - also printed by OUP - with the accompaniment re-scored for solo organ: https://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music...ductID=1634708
Surely less effective than the original, but it's Shephard's own original transcription.

Thanks MC, I haven’t seen the solo organ version, though it would be easy enough to play from the original score sans tpt. Trumpet and organ can be a thrilling combination, especially accompanying the combined choirs of the Southern Cathedrals Festival.

VH, the first edition doesn’t actually state lontano, though that is the effect usually achieved at the start. I seem to remember that, at least for one performance in Truro Cathedral, the trumpeter began playing about fifteen yards east of the choir then moved a bit closer for the fast section.
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[Vox Humana]

VH, the first edition doesn’t actually state lontano, though that is the effect usually achieved at the start. I seem to remember that, at least for one performance in Truro Cathedral, the trumpeter began playing about fifteen yards east of the choir then moved a bit closer for the fast section.

Thanks, Keraulophone. I'm going senile for sure. I've just been down to the basement to check my copy of the organ arrangement and it says nothing about 'lontano'. I don't know where I got that from (and I've played the thing, too). It must have been from some performance I heard.

[Don Basilio]

... fascinating - I didn't know that.

So in the 1920s a bunch of Anglican theologians and academics got together and said -"Well we know that Jesus, probably a rabbi, knew His Psalms, and could have perhaps said "Me and My father don't really think these particular verses sound very nice so they should be dropped" - but He obviously forgot to do so, so it behoves us in England in 1928 to make good His deficiencies, and we so recommend..."

quite extraordinary





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Not extraordinary really. The current RC daily office omits the verse and not really surprising: "O daughter of Babylon , wasted with misery: yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.
Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children: and throweth them against the stones."

[cat]

It is kind of extraordinary to omit bits that don't seem very nice.

Surely there's some value in contemplating why someone might feel so angry about being held captive that they would say such a thing about their captors' children?

[Keraulophone]

Not extraordinary really. The current RC daily office omits the verse and not really surprising: "O daughter of Babylon , wasted with misery: yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.
Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children: and throweth them against the stones."

However, as I remarked earlier, it was out of the ordinary that the preceding two verses were also omitted, a chop I hadn't tasted in over fifty years of psalm-singing:

7. Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem: how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground.

8. O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery: yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.

Where is the problem here?
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[vinteuil]

It is kind of extraordinary to omit bits that don't seem very nice.

Surely there's some value in contemplating why someone might feel so angry about being held captive that they would say such a thing about their captors' children?

... exactly.

If this text, deemed to be the word of God by believers, is to be taken seriously - surely it needs explaining, and not bowdlerizing and censoring "lest those in the pews be puzzled or upset".

I'm not a believer - but it seems extraordinary to me that church authorities, relatively recently, take it upon themselves to 'tidy up' unpleasantnesses in their core text in this way.

Will we soon see difficult prohibitions - such as the eating of shellfish and the combining of wool and cotton in the same cloth - and difficult 'acceptances' - such as that of slavery - all tidied away because they are "too difficult to explain"?

My scholarly instincts rebel...

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[ardcarp]

I don't really have any scholarly instincts (other than having taken Theology as a subsidiary subject...mainly because it was said to involve less work than others on offer.) I'm on the atheistic wing of agnosticism, but am still in favour of omitting the 'bracketed' verses. I could not let the words of verse 9 escape my lips. Fortunately during my spell as a lay clerk, I never had to. Christianity embraces much of the OT, but surely "I give you a new commandment...love one another" is really incompatible with violence.

PS Biblia Vulgata has no suggestion of omissions in (what is for its numbering system) Psalm 136. Things often sound better sung in another language, and the last line of verse 7 reads, "Usque ad fundamentum in ea".

[Vox Humana]

I'm on the atheistic wing of agnosticism

That would describe me quite well too, these days. Once upon a time I was far more religious, but I've always been of the view that, if the Old Testament had been trustworthy, there wouldn't have been a need for a new one. IMO it's best seen just as a traditional, oral history of the Jewish people (with all the provisos that the word 'oral' implies) and a backdrop against which to understand the New Testament (which I suppose is equally oral in origin). That said, I'm completely ignorant about theology.

[ardcarp]

Dredging up past learnings, I seem to recall that Islam accepts Moses, the Torah and even Davidic Psalms, referred to in the Quran as the Zabur.
More scholarly input required from someone I think.

[vinteuil]

PS Biblia Vulgata has no suggestion of omissions in (what is for its numbering system) Psalm 136. Things often sound better sung in another language, and the last line of verse 7 reads, "Usque ad fundamentum in ea".

... yes, Latin helps - "veiled in the obscurity of a learned language" as Gibbon has it.

The three 'censored' verses :

7 Memor esto, Domine, filiorum Edom, in die Jerusalem: qui dicunt: Exinanite, exinanite usque ad fundamentum in ea.
8 Filia Babylonis misera! beatus qui retribuet tibi retributionem tuam quam retribuisti nobis.
9 Beatus qui tenebit, et allidet parvulos tuos ad petram.

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[Simon Biazeck]

I don't really have any scholarly instincts (other than having taken Theology as a subsidiary subject...mainly because it was said to involve less work than others on offer.) I'm on the atheistic wing of agnosticism, but am still in favour of omitting the 'bracketed' verses. I could not let the words of verse 9 escape my lips. Fortunately during my spell as a lay clerk, I never had to. Christianity embraces much of the OT, but surely "I give you a new commandment...love one another" is really incompatible with violence.

PS Biblia Vulgata has no suggestion of omissions in (what is for its numbering system) Psalm 136. Things often sound better sung in another language, and the last line of verse 7 reads, "Usque ad fundamentum in ea".

137 in the Hebrew numbering.

ז זְכֹר יְהוָה, לִבְנֵי אֱדוֹם-- אֵת, יוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם:
הָאֹמְרִים, עָרוּ עָרוּ-- עַד, הַיְסוֹד בָּהּ.

ח בַּת-בָּבֶל, הַשְּׁדוּדָה:
אַשְׁרֵי שֶׁיְשַׁלֶּם-לָךְ-- אֶת-גְּמוּלֵךְ, שֶׁגָּמַלְתְּ לָנוּ.

ט אַשְׁרֵי, שֶׁיֹּאחֵז וְנִפֵּץ אֶת-עֹלָלַיִךְ-- אֶל-הַסָּלַע.

7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”

8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.

9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

[vinteuil]

Sorry to correct you, but it's Vulgate Psalm 137.

... or 136

https://vulgata.net/psalms?chapter=136

[mopsus]

I think the omission of the end of this psalm in worship has quite a long history - longer than the 20th century - but I can't cite a reference I'm afraid. We did hear the whole of it - set by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - in a recent evensong broadcast.

There are other standard omissions, including the whole of Ps 58. In the psalters in use at Westminster Abbey there is the instruction: 'Go to Ps 59. Proceed directly to Ps. 59. Do not pass GO. Do not collect £200.'

[vinteuil]

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Psalm 58

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2058&version=KJV

Golly!

Wouldn't miss it for the world

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