Saying the Litany in church
The Rood Screen at St Margaret and St Remigius, Seething, Norfolk. © Evelyin Simak, Geograph. Used under licence.
THE Litany is a rare event in today’s Church of England, and it is one my chief goals to use Comfortable Words to encourage the renewal of the Litany.
O HOLY, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three Persons and one God : have mercy upon us miserable sinners. (Read…)
While the rubric in the 1662 Prayer Book directs that the Litany be read “after Morning Prayer” on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, Elizabeth’s Injunctions of 1559 reaffirmed that the Litany should be said immediately before Holy Communion on Sunday, in much the same way that the Greek Orthodox say the Great Litany.
The correct place for the reading of the Litany is “in the midst of the church”, i.e. at the entrance to the choir where any rood screen might stand. A connection is made to Joel 2:17:
LET the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people.
The reader (perhaps a lay clerk, but a priest from the Lord’s Prayer onwards) kneels at a small desk just as the people kneel in their pews. The desk might have a fringed and coloured cloth on it, and a cushion to hold the Prayer Book. The priest would wear choir habit, of cassock, surplice, hood and scarf, unless the Litany is said as part of Holy Communion, when alb, stole and cope would be typical.
Percy Dearmer (1887-1936) was very keen on using the Litany in Procession, as it was at least since Elizabeth’s time – indeed, this is how Procession is properly done. In this case, the Procession begins at the altar, moving off on beginning Remember not, Lord… and continuing through the church chanting the prayers until Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us…, which should be said at the rood screen.
During Ember Weeks, it is usual to add immediately before the Prayer of St Chrysostom, one of the Prayers for clergy, such as this:
ALMIGHTY God, the giver of all good gifts, who of thy divine providence hast appointed divers Orders in thy Church; Give thy grace, we humbly beseech thee, to all those who are to be called to any office and administration in the same; and so replenish them with the truth of thy doctrine, and endue them with innocency of life, that they may faithfully serve before thee, to the glory of thy great Name, and the benefit of thy holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
There is a commentary on the Litany by Thomas Bisse (1675-1731) here.
"[Politicians] are employed in framing laws and statutes for preventing crimes, and keeping the disorderly multitude within bounds; and at the same time, by personally discountenancing public worship, they are weakening, they are even abolishing, among the multitude, that moral restraint which is of more general influence upon manners than all the laws they frame."
I FIND, by experience, that by often seeing her Portrait, & that of her Dearest Son, I many times recall Him & His Merits, her & her Perfections, to my mind, which before was void of such Heavenly Guests.
I BELIEVE in one God the Father Almighty,
February 4th, 2010 at 2:22 am
The only times I have ever heard the Litany said in church was when I belonged to a parish in a different city where the rector put it in on the first Sunday in Lent.
The rubric in the ’79, in case you’re curious, states:
“To be said or sung, kneeling, standing, or in procession; before the
Eucharist or after the Collects of Morning or Evening Prayer; or
separately; especially in Lent and on Rogation days.”
February 4th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Hi Eric,
I’m always curious! It’s good to know, too, that these things are still available to ’79 BCP and CW parishes, even if the majority don’t use them. In fairness, I’m not sure that many 1662 BCP parishes use the Litany very much either (Durham Cathedral doesn’t mention it on the Service Sheet, and I don’t remember it being done). Archbishop John Sentamu (York) used part of the new CW Litany during Advent: but then, as a rule Sentamu does seem to be a cut above.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
The Litany, among most Episcopalians, is essentially a mysterious relic from the past. It still exists, but it doesn’t get used all that much.
The privately printed Anglican Service Book (the ’79 put back into traditional language + some Anglo-Catholic supplements) not only includes the Litany, but restores the three invocations of the saints that were deleted before the 1549 was finalized.
February 4th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Yes, that’s how it seems to be everywhere. It gives me another windmill to tilt at, I suppose!
In case you’re interested, the Plainchant for the Litany can be found online here.
You raised on your blog the other day the question of private prayers, something that I muse on quite frequently too. I wonder if the Litany is an overlooked candidate? It is easy to say, since you don’t have to turn to the Psalms, or look up Bible readings; it is relatively short (about 10 minutes); it is antiphonal, encouraging everyone’s involvement; and it has everyday practical content.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
You are on to something there – and not alone! On another online haunt of mine, private use of the Litany is employed by more people than I would have expected. Admittedly, this was true only of Continuers using the 1928, but it’s a start.
Thanks for the link, btw. It is an oversight, in my opinion, that Saint Dunstan’s Plainsong Psalter did not include the Litany despite including everything else for a traditional Prayer Book Office, including a setting to chant the entire Athanasian Creed.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
There aren’t too many of us, certainly, but as you say it’s a start.
There was a time when I wasn’t so sure about Plainsong, whether it was really “our sound”. But reading the Anglican tradition has convinced me that it is, very much so, and dabbling in it myself has only made me more convinced.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
IMHO, plainsong is especially appropriate for small groups or when instrumental accompaniment is unavailable or unwanted–one or two strong cantors is all that is needed to lead the service decently. On the other hand, Anglican Chant seems best suited to be led by a choir with organ accompaniment.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Hi Death Bredon,
Oh yes, I agree you have to have a mixed economy of some sort. Even one verse of chant, and then a harmonised verse. That said, although I have cheerfully put it all over my website, in my experience Anglican chant can obscure things a little if there’s too much organ, or if the chant is a bit too clever or dissonant. There’s a clarity to Plainsong that’s especially good in resonant spaces like cathedrals. And I’m still hoping choirs might adopt a simple organum, a fantastic sound. I suppose that, on the “back to Fathers” principle, we should be looking at a simplified version of Old Roman chant, perhaps?
February 4th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Old Roman may have been used in the British Isles. Though, from what I have read, that is not certain.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Hi Eric. That’s my understanding too. Unfortunately, the genre I’m listening to at the time tends to take over a bit… In my more objective moments, I think the best solution for audibility and mood is a tasteful use of all three, simple Plainchant, Anglican chant, and polyphony. Not a bad musical “patrimony”, as we seem to say these days.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:53 am
Old Roman chant. Hmmm…. I hope I won’t abuse your hospitality, Nicholas, if I offer a long-winded lecture for the uninitiated?
There are two “dialects” of Roman liturgical chant. The dominant one, attested in virtually all surviving manuscripts from the late ninth century onwards, is known as “Gregorian” or “Romano-Frankish”. In the late nineteenth century, a French monk investigating chant manuscripts in Rome (this was André Mocquereau of Solesmes) discovered two books of chant that, in the main, contained the same texts for the same occasions as the familiar Gregorian books, but with melodies that, although obviously related in some way, were markedly different in style. To date, five such complete manuscripts have been identified (three for the Mass, two for the Office, plus a few fragments), all copied within the neighbourhood of Rome. Mocquereau judged this repertory to be a degenerate version of Gregorian chant. Later, others were to propose that Gregorian chant was a later revision of what came to be called “Old Roman” chant. The problem is that the earliest notated sources of Old Roman chant are two hundred years younger than the earliest of Gregorian chant (late eleventh century, as opposed to late ninth). True, the Old Roman books are from Rome itself rather than Gaul, and there is ninth-century testimony (Notker of St Gall, John the Deacon) that Franks and Romans sang “Roman chant” differently. A Roman chant repertory was probably first assimilated in Francia in the second half of the eighth century by cantors at Metz (the Carolingian equivalent of Westminster Abbey) under Archbishop Chrodegang and his successor Angilram. In the absence of the technology of musical notation (which first appears in the mid-ninth century), it is very likely that the native Roman chant underwent some “changes in translation” as it was accommodated to a fundamentally Gallican musical language. From what we can tell, however, the version of “Roman chant” that the Frankish cantors settled on was transmitted throughout Western Europe with incredible accuracy. Musical notation may have arisen as a response to the pressures of remembering the core repertory in the presence of burgeoning new musical genres (like polyphony and new poetic forms like sequences). Meanwhile, back in Rome, the tradition remained purely oral and seems to have continued to evolve independently, as oral traditions are wont to do after a couple of centuries. The surviving manuscripts of Old Roman chant may have been made as a way of preserving the local melodic repertory from being “infected” by the more widespread Gregorian version (the Old Roman repertory was later officially suppressed in Rome in favour of the Gregorian). The latest research on the question (particularly in the writings of Andreas Pfisterer) suggests that the Gregorian repertory may actually preserve more of the character of the putative eighth-century Roman original from which both traditions descend, although this is complicated by various pieces of evidence, such as a few instances in the Gregorian repertory where the Roman style seems to be deliberately parodied (in particular in the Holy Week chant Collegerunt pontifices, which uses an apparently Roman style for words from John 11:48: “the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation”).
The long and the short of it is that we have little to no idea what the chants sung by St Augustine and his companion missionaries sounded like, or those taught by John the Archcantor of St Peter’s during his sojourn at Wearmouth in 679-80 (when the Venerable Bede was given to that community by his parents aged seven). Alcuin left a florilegium of devotional texts, De laude Dei, which includes a large selection of chant texts. Some of these are “Roman”, others probably “Gallican”, others perhaps Spanish, and still others perhaps native English compositions. But a ninth-century biography of Alcuin mentions an English friend of Alcuin’s youth who went to Metz to learn to sing chant, so there may have been a Gregorian connection from an early stage. And that is certainly the repertory that will have been known to King Alfred’s adviser Grimbald of St-Bertin, whom Alfred’s biographer Asser describes as cantator optimus. During the monastic revival of the tenth century, St Oswald and his disciple Germanus learned chant at the monastery of Fleury (where St Benedict’s bones were claimed to rest), and St Aethelwold recruited singing teachers from Corbie to teach chant at his newly reformed monastery of Abingdon. Melodic variants of Corbie origin are found in all pre-Conquest English chant books, and some places, notably Worcester and Peterborough, preserved their musical traditions beyond the Conquest (at Glastonbury this came to bloodshed when the new Norman abbot tried to change things). So-called “Sarum chant” is a funny mixture arising mainly from Norman influence. All of these “families” are recognizably Gregorian. It’s just a note here and a word there that reveal the different affiliations.
It strikes me, therefore, that the only plainchant safely within our “patrimony” is therefore Gregorian. This is just as well, because we don’t even know how to sing Old Roman chant. The versions by Ensemble Organum are often very beautiful, but they are speculative in the extreme: so far as I know, there is no clear authority for the drones they add or for their pronounced rhythmic interpretation. As my undergraduate research advisor once said to me, “Their director (Marcel Pérès) is lots of fun, but he’s completely bonkers.”
February 5th, 2010 at 6:50 am
Although I freely admit that Ensemble Organum’s treatment of Old Roman Chant is speculative, my subjective intuition is that Marcel Peres must close to the truth. I base this on parallel observation of historic Church phenomena. To wit, prior to the rise of a distinctively late-Frankish spirituality, the connections between ecclesial architecture, iconography, and even rite and ceremonial appear to have been very similar. In sum, by all accounts, the life of a pre-Norman English Cathedral would not have been especially different from those in Constantinople. And Ensemble Organ show how this would be so on an aural level. In sum, I find it most extremely hard to imagine that “Gregorian Chant” goes back to Gregory the Great rather than Gregory the VII. Still, the prejudices Gibbonesque prejudices remain strong in the Academy.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Jesse,
Fascinating, and no abuse of hospitality at all. For me, it’s a reminder that, as I’ve said about other things, sometimes the things you like just aren’t in the tradition, and you have to be disciplined and give them up. Anglican plainsong is sui generis, and perhaps we should regard that as a virtue and, once again, not be for ever peeping over the hedge to see what others are doing.
As you know better than I do, Plainsong (here using the word to distinguish it from Anglican and Gregorian chant) is more or less monosyllabic, eschewing melismas, and is unadorned, all to project the words more clearly, and keep services at a manageable length. In addition, by suppressing improvisation it removes the emotion of the cantor, which is parallel with the insistence on the use of set forms of prayer rather than the improvised liturgy of the Puritans under the Interregnum. So the musical reform reflects the theological underpinnings of the wider reform, in ways which to my mind suggest that people like me need to come to terms with it. Just as long as that doesn’t mean wall-to-wall Merbecke: I think his strongly Calvinist sympathies led him to go too far with the simple, stepwise approach.
I do think we have to be careful with Anglican chant, much as I really do love it, because in my experience new and inevitably dissonant compositions, in the search for originality or “relevance”, are increasingly cluttering the sound. We need to apply the principles of musical reform, simplicity and clarity, to that too, and all our choral music. Fauxburdons like those of Percy Whitlock, Healey Willan and others, mixing plainsong and an Anglican chant tied to the same plainsong melody, are in my view the approach to explore.
Nonetheless, Death Bredon’s point about early Eastern influence on the British Church (I suppose, around the 4th to 6th centuries) is a good one, in terms of both liturgy and monasticism. Is it plausible, in your view, that musical influence might have been there too?
February 5th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Thanks, Nicholas. Of course Death Bredon is quite right to point to the possibility of Eastern influences on the pre-Roman, pre-Irish British Church (although I think a Romano-Frankish ethos was admired and imitated here long before the Conquest). The British Christians, after all, claimed that their liturgies had come down to them from John the Apostle himself. Musically speaking, though, we know even less about Eastern chant at this date than about Western. While Constantinople, of course, claims an unbroken musical tradition, its earliest sources are, I think, eleventh-century. Since I’m sure Death Bredon knows that Gregory VII was born over a century after the oldest complete book of Gregorian chant was notated (the Laon Gradual), I think he may be referring to a particular style of singing, rather than the specific melodic content (which is what I was mainly concerned about). I certainly don’t need convincing that Gregorian chant sounded very different in the eighth and ninth centuries from how it is usually sung today. When I give demonstrations, guided by rhythmic indications in the Laon Gradual and a family of early MSS connected with St Gall, I am often told that I sound like I should be singing from the top of a minaret! I’m absolutely with you about fauxbourdon. We could do with more of it. It is a way of having richer harmonies for special occasions without excluding confident, intelligent congregational participation.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Byzantine chant is often met with the same response. I’m sorry that circumstances are such that I can’t get to hear you doing these demonstrations! But I’m delighted you agree about the fauxbourdons. I could be quite content with that and nothing else. Plainsong or Anglican chant? Both! A classic “Anglican solution”!
February 5th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I wonder what Anglican chant would sound like at the top of a minaret?
February 5th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
There’s a tradition of the choir singing in the May Day from the top of Magdalen College Tower in Oxford, with the 17th century Hymnus Eucharisticus.
Te Deum Patrem colimus,
Te Laudibus prosequimus,
qui corpus cibo reficis,
coelesti mentem gratia.
Te adoramus, O Jesu,
Te, Fili unigenite,
Te, qui non dedignatus es
subire claustra Virginis.
Actus in crucem, factus est
irato Deo victima
per te, Salvator unice
vitae spes nobis rediit.
Tibi, aeterne Spiritus
cuius afflatu peperit
infantem Deum Maria,
aeternum benedicimus.
Triune Deus, hominum
salutis auctor optime,
immensum hoc mysterium
orante lingua canimus.
Mind you, not so very long ago, the Bishop of Oxford declared that he for one would be more than pleased to hear the plaintive cry of the muezzin, broadcast – somewhat prosaically – by loudspeaker across the eastern part of the city where the Muslim population chiefly lives. Not a fair fight, I think!
February 6th, 2010 at 4:49 am
I would love to be in Oxford to hear that! But, O dear, has Londonistan also spread to the home counties?!
February 6th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Wow, that was quite a blow away from the Litany but worth every word. Now what we have got to get Jesse to do is to put his demonstration on youtube so that they can be shared by all.
For myself, I love singing the Litany and in my small parish that is the easiest thing to get my people to do. Before our painful split, we sang almost everything, but the choir went one way and the bulk of the parish another.
Frankly I believe that the propers in Gregorian chant according to the books published by St Mary’s Wantage are among the most beautiful accompliments of the liturgy possible. The Roman St Ann’s Renaissance Choir used to come up to the Church of the Advent in San Francisco and sing them for us a couple of times a year. They would bring with them a set of tuned bells and a small portative organ that John Altstadt had made for them and the beauty of the tolal experience would simply blow you away. It was like going back in time at least twelve cxenturies but it was all in English.
And, yes, the Latins robbed us well. We simply need to incorporate what they did back into are most common practice.
Jesse, please consider my request to put your demonstrations on youtube and maybe even expend what you have done. I would love to have you sing the Wantage alleluias in English so that we could have them easily available.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
H Lee Poteet,
What a shame that the changes being brought in are dividing parishes once so united in worship. But the great thing about Gregorian chant is that it requires only moderate skill and one determined singer to make some very beautiful music.
The Litany is a relatively recent discovery for me, but like you I have found its simplicity very moving.