I have made it a practice to begin using the elements of the new translation of the Divine Office (as it will be called) as they become available and are authorized for use. In part this is so my prayer life doesn’t suffer the trauma of having to use a new translation all at once. This means that praying the Office involves one book for the psalter (The Abbey Psalms and Canticles), one for the collects, at least some of the time (my St. Paul Daily Roman Missal), and the current Liturgy of the Hours for everything else. A few months ago, I added to this pile The Divine Office Hymnal. Here I want to record a few initial reactions.
First, the theological content of most of these hymns is much richer than a lot of the hymnody in the Liturgy of the Hours. At the same time, the theology takes a bit of getting used to. A striking number of the hymns are from the early Middle Ages (6th-10th centuries). On the one hand, this is for me as a historical theologian quite enriching, since this is an era that, with a few exceptions such as Gregory the Great, is not particularly well-represented in the working canon of most theologians. At the same time, the religious sensibility of that rather rough-hewn era can seem alien at first to modern sensibilities, particularly the strongly penitential tone and sense of the threats posed by a dangerous world. For example, the hymn of the Office of Readings on Fridays in Ordinary Time begins:
As the cock’rel with his crowing
cleaves the darkness of the night
and relieves the fearful terror
of the night’s most gloomy hour,
we invoke you God, all loving
as we pray with humble heart.
I dare say that today most of us do not find the night terrifying. Moreover, some of the hymns seem to betray an approach to asceticism that seems at home in a monastic context, but maybe less so than in others. In the hymn for Thursday Lauds we pray:
Then let our innermost heart be pure
and free of senseless ignorance;
more sparing use of food and drink
wear down the lustful pride of flesh.
Of course, I’m inclined to think that we modern Christians could use a bit more early medieval sobriety, so this might all be to the good. But I do think it asks for some recalibration of our sensibilities.
Second, as the examples provided above might suggest, the translation is brutally literal and makes few concessions to English poetic conventions. This is not to fault the translators, since I suspect such literalism was part of their brief. But the lack not only of rhyme (many of the Latin originals don’t rhyme), but of other standard elements of English prosody such as alliteration, can make the texts seem a bit flat. This was particularly driven home to me during Holy Week when the hymn at Lauds, parts of Fortunatus’s Pange Lingua, uses the translation from the Missal for Good Friday, which was translated by the historian Michael Hodgetts using quite different protocols. The hymn not only rhymes, but occasionally uses archaic language (e.g. “scion”) and at times takes considerable liberties in translating (e.g. Crux fidelis, inter omnes, which literally means “Faithful cross, among all,” becomes “Faithful cross the saints rely on”). It seems a shame to me that the theological richness of this hymn could not have been given a more poetically rich treatment that exploits some of the genius of the English language.
Third, every hymn is set to a metrical melody and to a chant melody. Some of the suggested metrical melodies are familiar to me. Often, the Office hymn for a feast or season is set to a tune associated with that season (e.g. Erhalt Uns, Herr for the Office of Readings in Lent or Duke Street for Lauds during Easter). But some of the metrical hymns were unfamiliar to me. And some of them I found so unappealing (I’m looking at you Morning Song, appointed for Every. Single. Day. at Lauds during Ordinary Time) that I used my limited music reading skills to figure out the chant melodies so I wouldn’t need to sing the metrical ones. Of course, when the Divine Office is finally available in integral volumes the hymns won’t be printed with music, so people will be able to sing them to whatever tune fits the meter (which, of course, I could do now, though I find it a bit confusing to sing one tune while looking at another). But I am glad to get some of these chant melodies in my head, since I find that they tend to wear better on a daily basis than the metrical ones.