HOTC #15: The Star Proclaims the King Is Here
A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the need for hymns that cover the Epiphany blatantly, rather than in allegory or allusion - something that’s hard to do when “We Three Kings,” the most obvious candidate for that job, isn’t in the hymnal. This hymn jumps into that void right alongside “As with Gladness Men of Old,” but has a much longer, dare I say much more interesting, story behind it.
Postscript
When I started researching and writing this blog post, I really considered this one of my least favorite Epiphany hymns. The story behind this one, though, is fantastic, and has raised my opinion of it substantially.
La Lumière du monde, by François Boucher, 1750 (cropped to remove frame)
The Author
Like many things form the waning days of the Roman Empire, very little is known about Coelius Sedulius.
Tantalizingly, his name is the Latinized form of an Irish name - Siadhal. Was he Irish? If so, it is entirely possible that he was a contemporary or even protege of St. Patrick (both were definitely around in the 5th Century, but the dates with regard to both men are fuzzy to say the least), but that is speculation at best - most scholars hold that he was born in Rome.
Most of what we know comes from a pair of his surviving letters, as well as from Isidore of Seville and a single decretal of Pope Gelasius I. From these sources we gather that he had a secular education, and was possibly a teacher of rhetoric. He either converted to Christianity late in life, or (as so often happens) began to take his faith more seriously in old age. Isidore and Gelasius consider him to be or to have been (we’re unsure if he was still alive at the time of their writing) a presbyter, and medieval sources assumed that he resided in Italy. We can roughly guess that he was born around the year 400, and likely lived to old age, as both St. Jerome (who died in 420) and Pope Gelasius I (pope from 492-496) refer to him.
That’s it. That’s everything we know. The ravages of time and the onward rush of a stricken world have done much to erase whatever was known of this man.
The possibilities, as with so many of the ghostly figures and half-formed stories of Late Antiquity, are alluring, and the temptation to draw conclusions is a stimulating one. Are we dealing with an Irish emigre, sent to the Continent after conversion by St. Patrick? Maybe, but not likely. Are we dealing with a classically-trained Italian poet? Almost certainly (his influences clearly include Virgil). Could it be some combination of the two possibilities? Sure. Could it be something completely different? Sure. In keeping with almost everything else from this period, we’ll probably never know.
Several of Sedulius’s works survive, including the Carmen Paschale, his most famous work, which was almost certainly influenced by Jerome, as it contains these lines that draw on the famous symbols of the Four Evangelists that came to be coagulated, as it were, under Jerome:
“Matthew plays the role of the whole human race;/
Mark roars like the loud voice of a lion through the wilderness;/
Luke holds the office of the priesthood with the face of an ox;/
Flying like an eagle, John reaches for the stars with his word.”
The Text
This text originates as a section of a long hymn by Sedulius that came to be known by its incipit, "A solis ortus cardine.” The work is an abecedarius, that is a sort of acrostic in which the first letters of the verses (or strophes, or lines, etc.) form the alphabet. St. Augustine (my source says “famously,” but I’d never heard of this until I researched this hymn) wrote an abecedarius against the Donatists in 393. St. Augustine’s contribution is considered one of the first (possibly the first) example of medieval rhythmic poetry, so clearly the form was alive and kicking (and perhaps quite popular) in Sedulius’s time.
The hymn tells the life of Christ from birth to resurrection in 23 verses (one for each then-existing letter of the Latin alphabet). Apologies for the Wikipedia link, but I don’t think you’re going to find a line-by-line translation better than this one. The work was well-known in the Middle Ages, with The Venerable Bede referencing it and musical settings of fragments of the work (discussed in the following pair of paragraphs) by composers across Europe.
At some point the first seven verses (A-G), covering the Nativity, were divorced from the rest of the poetry, and a doxological final verse by someone else was added to the end. This rump of the original text became extremely popular during the Middle Ages, and would later form the basis for Luther’s translation of the text into German as “Christum wir sollen loben schon,” which is itself the source material for LSB #385. This descendant text would have a long shelf life, appearing in choral music all over Europe and from both the Latin and German churches, as evidenced by this gem from Palestrina and this wonder for the Second Day of Christmas from J.S. Bach.
The eighth, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth verses of Sedulius’s work (H, I, L, and N) also got the same treatment at some point, being spun off as their own separate hymn with a doxology appended to the end. This went, naturally, by the incipit of the eighth verse, “Hositis Herodes impie,” and was intended for use at Epiphany, covering as it did the interaction of Herod the Great and the Wise Men, the Baptism of Christ, and the Wedding at Cana. This also saw wide use in the Middle Ages, and it left Luther’s desk as “Was fürchtst du, Feind Herodes, sehr” sometime before 1543.
Both texts still appear in the Liturgy of the Hours for the Roman church up to this day. More to our point here, however, the second fragment is the basis of the hymn we’re considering in this blog post.
The text before us is John Mason Neale’s 19th Century translation, which he made directly from Sedulius’s Latin, but which here is altered somewhat both for clarity and as a nod to Luther’s German translation.
The retelling of the Epiphany story is fairly straightforward here, as indeed it also is in Sedulius’s original - the first verse deals with the earthly paranoia of Herod, while the second brings in the figures of the three Wise Men, and the third leads us to the River Jordan and the baptism of Christ there by St. John the Baptist. The hymn winds up on the miracle performed at the Wedding at Cana and a doxology (again, not from Sedulius). Thus, the hymn follows the ordering set forth in Sedulius’s original (the omitted verses from Sedulius’s work referred to the Massacre of the Innocents and to Jesus’ miracles in general).
The Tune
WO GOTT ZUM HAUS is one of those lesser-known classics among the chorales, appearing in Lutheran Service Book no less than three times (LSB #862 [in D major] and LSB #934 [ in Eb major] are the other two settings). It is not the original tune to this hymn, but is the original tune to LSB #862.
The composer of this tune is unknown, but it is self-evidently tied to the hymn Wo Gott zum Haus, penned by Johann Kolross, a Protestant Basel school rector in the 16th Century. That text is based on Psalm 127, and forms the basis of LSB #862.
The Companion opines, and I tend to agree, that the bar lines are offset by two beats from where they really ought to be - the half note that begins the hymn should be treated almost as a pickup note to the two quarter notes that follow.
It is, otherwise, a pretty typical chorale of the period of the Reformation, and as such was made use of by various composers who transited that tradition in later centuries. Pachelbel has two settings: one, a short imitative piece, by my estimation probably a hymn introduction, and secondly a trio with the tune in the pedal. Bach utilizes the first verse of Kolross’s poetry with the chorale tune in the four part chorale of the same name, BWV 438.
Settings of this hymn and/or tune can be found in:
For organ:
Concordia Hymn Prelude Library, Vol. 12
Pachelbel Selected Organ Works, Vol. 3
Introductions, Harmonizations, Accompaniments, Interpretations, Vol. 9