Music, the Psalms, and the Mass: Prayer and Praise Set to Music

Orientation #

He does not say what came last time or what comes next; the recording opens mid-conversation (“Thomas says some very strong things about music”) and ends mid-thought on fiction and the fall. He mentions bringing “some of those little quotes sometime” from Thomas and Shakespeare on music. He refers back to something said “in another class” about poetry and psalmody, and to having “talked to you before” about the symmetry of the Mass. The preceding class ended De Anima II with reflections on music and moral formation; the next opens Summa Theologiae I q. 75.

The class, in order #

1. The power of music: Odysseus at the mast (“bring more rope and tie me even tighter”) #

Point: music acts on us below reason, and even a forewarned reason is in danger from it.

• Odysseus, warned by Circe about the sirens, plugs the crew’s ears but, curious, has himself tied to the mast and orders that if he begs release they bring more rope: shows that even the great Odysseus, forewarned, would be seduced and led astray; had the crew’s ears been open, all would have been lost.
• Nazi use of music; Wagner prohibited in Israel (attempts now to lift it); even Nazi military music is “catching” and gets you caught up in its spirit; Revolutionary War fife and drum making a boy march off to the army: the same power.
• People become attached to the music they are accustomed to; the wrong kind is very hard to change. It works “not subliminal, but below reason”: it deals with what can partake of reason but does not always, and has a natural attraction for us.

2. Student: does music tell us about nature or about music? (“closer to thinking on nature or words”) #

Point: music is nearer to reason than things are, as words are nearer to thoughts than things.

1. Words signify things through thoughts, so words are closer to thoughts than things are.
2. Order in the great mind: things, then thoughts, then words. Order in the student: words (of Aristotle, of Thomas), through them the teacher’s thoughts, through those the things.
3. Music likewise represents, not thoughts, but emotions, and the virtues concerned with the emotions; good music represents emotions partaking of reason, as opposed to vices. Most of all in Mozart. Conclusion: there is something rational in music; it signifies, or can signify, something that partakes of reason.

3. Psalms are prayers, not poems (“it’s accidental to a prayer that’d be put into verse”) #

Point: being in verse does not make a thing a poem; the psalms should be called prayers.

• Student recalls his earlier distinction between poetry and psalmody. Reply: the psalms are prayers, and a prayer can be put into meter, rhythm and rhyme.
• Adoro te devote of Thomas, called in Latin a rhythmus: it rhymes (“Adoro te devote, latens deitas, / quae sub his figuris vere latitas”) and has meter, which he takes as trochaic (“Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur”). Still not in the same category as a Shakespearean sonnet.
• His definition of a Shakespearean sonnet: a likeness of thought and feeling in 14 lines of iambic pentameter, three quatrains with alternate rhyme, completed by a rhyming couplet. Adoro te devote is not a likeness of thought or feeling but a prayer in verse and rhyme.
• The Our Father in the original (Aramaic or whatever it was) is said to have had a rhythm, maybe meter; the psalms in Hebrew had a meter, perhaps lost in translation.
• Empedocles wrote his philosophy in verse, as Lucretius did later (Aristotle mentions this): still not a poem but philosophy.
• Student: so the generic definition of poem is “likeness of thought or feeling”? Yes. If “poem” meant anything in meter, a mnemonic would count: “Thirty days has September…” is put in meter merely so you remember it.
• The sonnet makes a likeness of thought and feeling; nobody knows whether Shakespeare’s own; it aims at something universal.
• Shakespeare’s sonnet: he loves to hear his mistress’s voice though music has a far more pleasant sound. He quotes this to show the accidental: he does not enjoy her voice for its own sake (else he would enjoy the music more), but insofar as it belongs to someone he loves. Same with recognizing a friend’s voice on the phone (not because it is like Pavarotti’s), and a melody associated with a person or place we enjoyed: accidental.
• Conclusion: verse is accidental to a prayer, essential to a poem, “because he’s trying to please us.” Calling the psalms poems starts the wrong thinking. Student: so all is not lost by relying on a translation? “In a certain sense, all might be lost” for your favourite poems; not so for prayers.

4. Three fifties of the Psalter and the rosary (“he divides the Psalm into three fifties”) #

Point: the 150 psalms fall into three fifties matching the three stages of the spiritual life, and the rosary’s fifteen decades mirror the Psalter.

• The rosary’s 150 Hail Marys (fifteen tens) come from the Psalter.
• Thomas’s commentary on the Psalms is incomplete (he died before finishing; goes to about Psalm 51 or 53). Following Augustine, he divides the Psalter into three fifties, on the principle Augustine gives in his sermon on Psalm 150 (old numbering): Psalm 50 is penance and repentance, Psalm 100 good deeds, Psalm 150 praising and thanking God; each is symbolic of its fifty.
• Three stages of charity / the spiritual life: first, fighting sins and evil tendencies (never entirely over); second, progressing from virtue to virtue; third, resting in God. St Teresa of Avila at the end of her life: she would not say what she could have in heaven she does not have now, her union with God already complete: resting in God.
• Thomas subdivides the first fifty into five decades, each doing something different; “really kind of beautiful,” and one would like to know what he would have done with the second fifty (“only Thomas could have done that”).

5. Modes of Scripture; prayer vs praise; the Hail Mary (“per modum orationis vel laudis”) #

Point: the psalms proceed by prayer and praise, and the two halves of the Hail Mary do the same, which is a second reason the rosary fits the Psalter.

• Thomas on the modus of the books of Scripture: modus narrativus (historical books); modus disputativus (Job); a commanding mode (books laying down the law, exhortation); the Psalms proceed per modum laudis, per modum orationis: prayerful and praising. This holds “always for the most part”: there is some history and prophecy in the Psalms too.
• Prayer vs praise: “prayer” is sometimes used broadly to include praise, but here Thomas distinguishes prayer in the strict sense, asking God for suitable things, from praise. The apostles ask “teach us how to pray”; Christ gives the Our Father with seven things to ask for, whose order Augustine and Thomas explain: prayer in the strict sense.
• Hail Mary, first half (laudativus): “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” asks nothing, it praises, as the angel praised her. Thomas on the Annunciation: to get the attention of a humble person, who has no high thoughts of herself, you praise her, since she never thought of that. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb” is Elizabeth’s praise at the Visitation. Second half, added by the Church, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners…”: prayer in the narrow sense.
• So the rosary represents the psalms not only by the number 150 but because the Hail Mary contains both modes, orativus and laudativus.
• In the decades of the psalms, psalms asking often precede psalms thanking for what was received; Thomas will note that a later psalm thanks for what an earlier one asked.
• In heaven there is nothing to ask for, but there will be praising and thanking God.

6. Music in honour; eating in heaven is metaphor, praise is not (“Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise”) #

Point: music is the fitting way to honour, so it fits praising God; and unlike eating, praise is said of heaven properly.

• We honour with music: the national anthem, “Hail to the Chief” for the president, military music for soldiers. Nothing is more appropriate for honouring somebody, hence for honouring God.
• Student: no eating or drinking in heaven? Only metaphorically (“no pizza”). From a Shakespeare history play, “Let us go in to banquet royally” after the golden day of victory: lines he offered a friend as describing the saints after victory over the world, the flesh and the devil. Christ in Luke: you will eat and drink at my Father’s table, meaning the beatific vision.
• How the metaphor works: food is the object of the vegetative (feeding) soul, so we speak of the objects of the other powers as food: “food for thought,” Socrates’ “feast for reason.” To eat at the Father’s table is to have his object, himself, whom he knows and loves and through whom he knows and loves other things; so we shall see God as he is.
• What refers to eating is said metaphorically in Scripture; what refers to praise is said properly: there will be vocal praise in heaven, so songs of praise are very close to what heaven is like. St Teresa appearing to one of her sisters after death: you praise God not seeing him, I praise him now seeing him.
• Psalm 99 (old numbering), which he used with children: “Sing joyfully to the Lord… serve the Lord with gladness” (do God’s will), “know that the Lord is God; he made us as we are; his people, the flock he tends.” He told Father Kramer this is like an exhortation to read the Summa Contra Gentiles, which is divided the same way: God in himself, God as maker, God as end.
• “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise” (the English version he memorized): asking thinks of what you need, yourself (not selfish in the bad sense); thanking begins to move away from yourself, thinking of what you already received; praising does not look back at yourself at all, only at God in himself, “holy, holy, holy” like the angels.

7. The five sung parts of the Mass and their symmetry (“A B C B A, right?”) #

Point: the parts of the Mass most set to music are two prayers, two praises, and a confession of faith at the centre, arranged symmetrically.

• The Psalms are named for David’s instrument: pluck the string and pray; nowadays the Our Father is sometimes sung.
• The five parts set to music over and over (as in Mozart masses): Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Sanctus-Benedictus, Agnus Dei. Kyrie and Agnus Dei are prayers, asking mercy (“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis… dona nobis pacem”). Gloria and Sanctus are mainly praise (a little prayer in the Gloria). The Creed is different: confession of faith. Hence A B C B A.
• Same symmetry in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (someone pointed this out to him first): court, peasants’ dwellings, forest, peasants’ dwellings, court.
• Same in the five works of his introduction to philosophy: Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, all arranged around the trial of Socrates. Apology is the odd one, his defence in court, the most read and famous (“the unexamined life is not worth living”). Euthyphro and Crito are both pithier and correspond to the larger Meno and Phaedo, which the sizes themselves show. Correspondences: Euthyphro discusses what piety is, Crito shows Socrates’ piety; Meno introduces logic (student suggests), Phaedo states the need for it; Meno argues immortality from recollection, Phaedo recalls and adds to that argument. Narrative: Meno shows Socrates examining men, Anytus leaving in a huff; Euthyphro, Socrates at the courthouse to see the charges, meeting Euthyphro who is charging his father with impiety; Apology, trial and sentence; Crito, the plot to spring him, refused; Phaedo, his death in prison. “The more you study the works the more you see that.”
• Mozart’s litanies for the Venerable Sacrament begin with a Kyrie and end with an Agnus Dei; in one the Kyrie music is so beautiful he brings something of it back at the end, both asking mercy. But in the Kyrie it is the Trinity asked for mercy, in the Agnus Dei the incarnate Word (the Father cannot be called Agnus Dei; “Behold the Lamb of God,” St John). Likewise the Gloria is divided by the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), while Sanctus is the divine nature (Trinity) and Benedictus the human nature; Mozart’s music changes from Sanctus to Benedictus, as in the Creed when it passes from the divine nature to the incarnation, becoming more gentle and sweet, God condescending to become man.

8. Vocal praise in heaven; the better part; fiction and the fall (“Mary has chosen the better part”) #

Point: what is set to music, prayer and praise, is what continues in the next world.

• Thomas is explicit: no eating or drinking there (nor desire to eat, “unless you’re Muslim”), but laus vocalis, vocal praise; so Mozart and Palestrina, “assuming they both made it,” will be up there.
• Martha and Mary: Mary chose the better part, not the more necessary part, and it will not be taken away, i.e. continues in the next world; the busy practical life disappears, the contemplative life of listening to God continues and is perfected. So the cook is more necessary than Mozart (we must eat), but Mozart has chosen the better part.
• We do not know what heaven’s music will be like, only that it will be more beautiful; remark on La Clemenza di Tito, music beautiful enough to entice the angels to listen. Bodies restored there.
• Music will remain, but he thinks fiction will not: fiction as we know it is tied to fallen man; tragedy and comedy both result from the fall. (Recording ends here.)

His words #

• below reason: how music acts on us, “not subliminal” but on what can partake of reason and does not always.
• likeness of thought and feeling: his generic definition of a poem; the Shakespearean sonnet specifies 14 lines, iambic pentameter, three quatrains, couplet.
• rhythmus: what Adoro te devote is called in Latin, for its rhythm and rhyme.
• accidental vs essential: verse is accidental to a prayer, essential to a poem.
• three fifties: Augustine’s and Thomas’s division of the Psalter by Psalms 50, 100, 150.
• modus narrativus / disputativus / commanding: Thomas’s ways of proceeding of Scripture’s books.
• per modum orationis vel laudis; orativus and laudativus: the Psalms’ mode; prayer (strict sense: asking suitable things of God) vs praise.
• food for thought / feast for reason: the metaphor by which the object of a power is called food, from the vegetative soul.
• laus vocalis: vocal praise, which Thomas says will exist in heaven.
• A B C B A: the symmetry of the five sung Mass parts, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the five dialogues.
• the better part: Mary’s, not the more necessary part; applied to Mozart vs the cook.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, opening lines and “Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur”.
• Shakespeare, Sonnets, “I love to hear my mistress’ voice” lines (quoted from memory).
• Psalm 99 (old numbering), quoted in English from memory.
• Agnus Dei text of the Mass.

Mentioned

• Homer, Odyssey (sirens, Circe’s advice).
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Psalms (incomplete, to about Psalm 51-53; division into three fifties and decades).
• Augustine, sermon on Psalm 150 (old numbering).
• Thomas Aquinas on the modes of the books of Scripture (locus not given).
• Thomas Aquinas on the Annunciation (praising the humble to get attention; locus not given).
• Luke: “teach us how to pray”; eating and drinking at my Father’s table; Martha and Mary.
• Augustine and Thomas on the order of the seven petitions of the Our Father.
• Aristotle on Empedocles writing philosophy in verse; Lucretius.
• Shakespeare, a history play (“Let us go in to banquet royally”; play not named); A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (its division: God in himself, as maker, as end).
• Plato, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo.
• Mozart: masses, litanies for the Venerable Sacrament, La Clemenza di Tito; Palestrina.
• St Teresa of Avila (two anecdotes); St John, “Behold the Lamb of God.”

His questions #

• What is closer to thinking on nature, words or things? Words, because they signify things through thoughts.
• What does music represent, if not thoughts? Emotions, and the virtues concerned with them; good music, emotions partaking of reason.
• Is Shakespeare enjoying the sound of his mistress’s voice for its own sake? No, else he would enjoy the music more; he enjoys it as belonging to one he loves, accidentally.
• Should the Psalms be called poems? No; they are prayers, and verse is accidental to a prayer.
• How do you get the attention of someone humble? You praise her, since she never thought that of herself.
• Will we eat and drink in heaven? Only metaphorically; eating at the Father’s table means the beatific vision.
• Which of the five sung parts of the Mass are prayers and which praise? Kyrie and Agnus Dei are prayers for mercy; Gloria and Sanctus mainly praise; the Creed is confession of faith.
• Which is the odd work among the five dialogues, and which pairs correspond? The Apology; Euthyphro with Crito (pithier), Meno with Phaedo (larger).
• Who has chosen the better part, the cook or Mozart? Mozart; the cook is more necessary, but vocal praise continues in the next world.