Popule meus
Veneration of the Cross (1962 and 1974 Graduale)
[ pdf | mid ]
Composer: Tomas Luis de Victoria (1540-1613)
Voices: SATB
Scripture Verses: various references
The Good Friday Reproaches have been, as Mel Gibson’s most recent movie is and will be, a lightning rod for criticism, as the following translation will show.
| V/. Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi. V/. Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti, parasti crucem Salvatori tuo.C/. Agios o Theos! Sanctus Deus! Agios ischyros! Sanctus fortis! Agios athanatos, eleison ymas. Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis. V/. Quia eduxi te per desertum quadraginta annis, et manna cibavi te, et introduxi te in terram satis bonam: parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo. C/. Agios o Theos! V/. Quid ultra debui facere tibi, et non feci? Ego quidem plantavi te vineam meam speciosissimam: et tu facta es mihi nimis amara: aceto namque sitim meam potasti: et lancea perforasti latus Salvatori tuo. C/. Agios o Theos! V/. Ego propter te flagellavi Aegyptum cum primogenitus suis: et tu me flagellatum tradidisti. R/. Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi. V/. Ego eduxi te de Aegypto, demerso Pharaone in Mare Rubrum: et tu me tradidisti principibus sacerdotum. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego ante te aperui mare: et tu aperuisti lancea latus meum. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego ante te praeivi in columna nubis: et tu me duxisti ad praetorium Pilati. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego te pavi manna per desertum: et tu me cecidisti alapis et flagellis. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego te potavi aqua salutis de petra: et tu me potasti felle, et aceto. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego propter te Chananaeorum reges percussi: et tu percussisti arundine caput meum. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego dedi tibi sceptrum regale: et tu dedisti capiti meo spineam coronam. R/. Popule meus. V/. Ego te exaltavi magna virtute: et tu me suspendisti in patibulo Crucis. R/. Popule meus. |
V/. O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me. V/. Because I led thee out of the land of Egypt, thou hast prepared a cross for thy Savior.C/. O holy God! O holy God! O holy strong One! O holy strong One! O holy immortal one, have mercy on us. O holy immortal one, have mercy on us. V/. Because I led thee out through the desert forty years: and fed thee with manna, and brought thee into a land exceeding good, thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Savior. C/. O holy God!… V/. What more ought I have done for thee, that I have not done? I planted thee, indeed, My most beautiful vineyard: and thou hast become exceeding bitter to Me: for in My thirst thou gavest Me vinegar to drink: and with a lance thou hast pierced the side of thy Savior. C/. O holy God!… V/. For thy sake I scourged Egypt with its first-born: and thou hast scourged Me and delivered Me up. R/. O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me. V/. I led thee out of Egypt having drowned Pharao in the Red Sea: and thou hast delivered Me to the chief priests. R/. O my people… V/. I opened the sea before thee: and thou with a spear hast opened My side. R/. O my people… V/. I went before thee in a pillar of cloud: and thou hast led Me to the judgement hall of Pilate. R/. O my people… V/. I fed thee with manna in the desert; and thou hast beaten Me with whips and scourges. R/. O my people… V/. I gave thee the water of salvation from the rock to drink: and thou hast given Me gall and vinegar. R/. O my people… V/. For thy sake I struck the kings of the Chanaanites: and thou hast struck My head with a reed. R/. O my people… V/. I gave thee a royal sceptre: and thou hast given to My head a crown of thorns. R/. O my people… V/. I exalted thee with great strength: and thou hast hanged Me on the gibbet of the Cross. R/. O my people… |
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When I mentioned at a meeting about two months ago that I was planning on doing the Reproaches, our DRE started sputtering apoplectically.
Still not sure why, although she did say that my using chant and the psalm tones upset her so much she “cannot enter prayerfully into the liturgy.”
I just couldn’t bear the idea of singing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island during the Veneration of the Cross, as they used to do here.
In any case, we are doing the Reproaches two days from now, and I am very proud of the choir. (Small children particularly seem to pick up chant easily and quickly. They have, and express, strong preferences for which psalm tones they want me to use.)
We are using Gary Penkala’s setting for Good Friday in my parish–at our pastor’s suggestion! Don’t know what kind of fallout will happen, but I think most of our people have been properly catechized about the significance of the texts, and that they really are not anti-semetic.
That is a lie.
Folks who dislike the Reproaches seem to feel they are antisemitic…I guess they don’t realize that the People being addressed are Christians. Our roots are the same as those of modern Jews. We look to Abraham as our father in faith, and consider the prophets to have spoken (and to speak) as much to us as to the Israelites of the first millenium B.C.
Two music directors ago we sang the reproaches, but now we do not at our parish. We are the poorer for it as the words and chant are beautiful, and it is well for us to recognize that we have not responded to the Lord as we ought to. The real “mystery” of the Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, which are presented in the Reproaches as well, is how we could have been so blind to the Savior among us, a blindness that continues today.
Sure, poopsie, whatever you say.
do you know “the reproaches” by john sanders (born 1933, british contemporary composer)? it’s the most moving setting of the text i’ve ever heard. every year i listen to it on repeat at this season, and every year it breaks something in me. so stark. and so rich. it’s not the same kind of beauty, nor the same kind of richness, as the gregorian setting, but i think of all the versions i’ve heard it comes the closest to mirroring the agony in the chant setting.
I love the Sanders composition of the reproaches as well. John Scott did an excellent recording with his choir before he came to NYC a few years ago. You can find it on Amazon.com. The music is published by the Royal School of Church Music. Well worth the effort.
Romy, can you tell me who the publisher is?
Or do you only know it from recording?
It is bizzare to me that the Reproaches could be considered anti-Semitic, based as they are on the prohpet Micah (6:1-4). Does this mean that other OT passages which reproach the people of the Old Covenant for their infidelity and sins are also “anti-Semitic”?
I grew up listening to these, sang them in a schola, and always found them one of the most moving chants of the entire year. It simply never even occurred to me that we were condeming others – a rather offensive notion on Good Friday. The text speaks to us of ourselves (“but *you* have . . . . ” ), as do all the “reproaching” passages from the Old Testament.
The Reproaches is available through GIA Publications. They distribute music for the Royal School of Church Music in the states. You can order direct from the RSCM as well. The stock code # is RS362.
Let me know if I can help further.
Whats up with people? The Reproaches anti-Semitic?!?!?!?!? NO, NO, NO; They are directed at ALL of US, especially those who claim to be Christian and followers of Christ. We have been singing them at the Veneration of the Cross in our parish for years, together with “O Sacred Head Surrounded”.
Though a cradle Catholic, I managed to miss hearing the Reproaches for 20 years until I first heard them in the Dominican parish of St. Mary in New Haven, CT. The schola performed the Tomas Luis de Victoria setting.
It moved me so much that I later devoted a term paper to its origins and developments. It is certainly NOT anti-semitic. The origin of one part of the text is in Micah. But it is actually an inversion of a beautiful Passover hymn, Dayenu, which recounts the deeds of salvation history in an attitude of overflowing gratitude and joy.
In the Christian reversal, however, two things happen:
1) The early Christians, especially those with a high degree of OT awareness, keenly felt themselves to be the new People of God — “fulfilled” Jews or ingrafted Gentiles (cf. Rom 9-11) — and so they frequently referred to themselves as “Israel,” or saw “My people” of Micah 6 as applying directly to them. A proper understanding of the authorial intention and context of use of this hymn should make it clear that the “YOU opened my side with a lance” is directed not to the agents of Christ’s Passion on calvary, but to the worshipping Christian community.
2) In the Reproaches, every magnanimous act of salvation history is paired with a cruel deed of the Lord’s Passion for the purposes of ritual self-accusation on Good Friday. Add the Lord’s own question in the form of an unanswerable Greek-style chorus, and you have the whole song.
In a word, the Reproaches turns on the key distinction: the agents of Christ’s passion “did not know what they do,” but we Christians DO KNOW, and so are deeply responsible when our sins add to the Lord’s sorrow.
We have early texts of the Reproaches that date to the 6th/7th century, and reason to suspect they represent a tradition which is very, very early.
If you want more details, I’ve linked to my own old term paper in this blog post:
http://old-oligarch.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_old-oligarch_archive.html#108157877254289207
We sing a wonderful setting of The Reproaches every year at Holy Name Cathedral, Bombay. As a bass. it’s one of my favourite pieces to sing, and the most moving. A parish where it is not sung is parish that has cut off it’s nose…..
As for anti semitism, should the Passion Responses of the Mob also be axed?
Our faith has been politicised for most of it’s history, let’s at least leave our traditions intact, untainted by political correctness.
Wow I’m glad to see this thread! I have a recording of the Sanders setting and it is AMAZING. I hope to one day make that a Passion Sunday/Good Friday regular! I don’t think the text is at all anti-semetic; as someone said, it parallels all that the Lord has done for us (or in this case the Jews, our predecessors in faith) as contrasted to what we have done TO Him. I think if anything it’s a beautiful way to show the deepness of God’s eternal love for us, in that through all of that He still loves us more than ever.
Baptista, do you sing the Sanders setting? I haven’t heard any others, but I can’t immagine them conveying NEAR as much sorrow, beauty, and emotion as the Sanders.
My name is Phil, and I’m a recovering choir director.
I have always done the Reproaches for Good Friday. Yes, the Victoria setting from the St. Gregory’s Hymnal. As the veneration of the cross would go on, we would sing the verses from the Graduale Romanum and respond with Victoria’s “Popule meus” response. It was lovely.
Then the new regime took over, and it was crushed. Isaiah 50 was all together too real for me.
My 30 years in the choir loft is at an end. The narcisstic modernists are having their day. The OCP cranks out the garbage of either:
1). the people are part of the very Godhead, or
2). we worship ourselves and not God
I used to sing with the St. Gregory Society in New Haven; maybe Britt and Nicholas will take me back if I move up there.
Oh well, spleen vented. God will not let His Church ultimately fail. It is just so sad to see the ‘desolate city’ caused by the outright disobedience to what Holy Mother Church teaches.
A blessed Holy Week and joyous Easter to all.
Phil
The Reproaches
Confessions of a Recovering Choir Director was nice enough to type out the Reproaches used on Good Friday last year, so I’ll link to them this year. I hope I hear them chanted tomorrow….
I am dashed. It has never occurred to me to consider the reproaches anti-semitic. More in the way of anti-sinner, I think…
A lifetime choir director, I have done the Sanders, and it is heart-wrenching indeed. I would like to do the gregorian someday, but being LCMS it is difficult to get the people to sit still for that much latin. I am on the lookout for more settings of this text, having a small choir which struggles with music in more than 4 or 5 voices.
As long as I am Minister of Music, we will never give up this text to the ravings of the modernist horde.
Roderick, again, I highly recommend Gary Penkala’s setting, which can be purchased at: http://www.canticanova.com
Infinitely easy to learn, and true to the Roman Missal (although in English), you CANNOT go wrong with this setting!
We do the Sanders every year, and it’s such a stunning composition, and such powerful texts, that every year at least one person in the congregation tells me that it made them cry (no, it’s not because of bad singing…). The choir looks forward to it each Good Friday, and when I pass it out, people say, “Oh, this is the *scary* piece!” Not scary because it’s difficult, but scary because the dissonances in the composition (especially the dueling sopranos) express with absolute perfection the cries of the text. It is truly a remarkable setting of what is, as has been mentioned above, a heart-wrenching moment in the liturgy.