Ele's Music Notes
by Ele Nash

November 2001

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

November is a month of remembrance ... of wars fought, of brave military who served, of that first Thanksgiving and the traditions it engendered, of the passing year and what it has brought. Among November hallmarks, musicians and especially organists recall another: November 22 is considered to be the feastday of St. Cecilia, Patroness of Music. Cecilia was a virgin Roman Christian who as a young girl was given in marriage to a pagan noble named Valerian. She wore sackcloth next to her skin, and fasted, and invoked the saints and angels and virgins, beseeching them to guard her virginity. On their wedding day while musical instruments were playing she was singing in her heart to God alone saying: "Make my heart and my body pure that I may not be confounded." The Acts of Cecilia states, "While the profane music of her wedding was heard, Cecilia was singing in her heart a hymn of love for Jesus, her true spouse." In later texts it was translated that she was playing an organ instead of listening to music as she prayed.

Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees unrooted left their place,
Sequacious of the lyre;
But bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder higher.
When to her organ vocal breath was given,
An angel heard, and straight appear'd
Mistaking Earth for Heaven.

Cecilia was able to not only convert her husband to Christianity but also persuade him to live with her in continence. Christianity at the time was illegal in Rome. Valerian was martyred and Cecilia also, not long after, when she refused to sacrifice to false gods. By her preaching she had converted four hundred persons to Christianity whom Pope Urban baptized, and before she died she gave her house over to be used as a church.

Cecilia has been venerated as a saint from the late fifth century, but it was not until late in the fifteenth century that Cecilia was declared the patron saint of church music by several musicians' guilds and began being regularly portrayed playing the organ, often surrounded by angels. The first documented celebrations of St. Cecilia's Day were held in France on November 22, 1570. English writers and composers especially seem to have been drawn to this lady and her story. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) makes direct reference to the virgin saint in his Second Nun's Priest Tale in an almost word-for-word translation of the Acts of St. Cecilia in the Tale:

And while the organs maden melodie
To God alone in hart thus sang she:
'0 Lord, my soule and eek my body gye
Unwemmed, lest confounded be.

Composer John Blow (1649-1709) wrote five odes for St. Cecilia's Day. The great Baroque composer and organist Henry Purcell (1659-1705) wrote Hail, Bright Cecilia and a Te Deum for St. Cecilia's Day. Curiously, he died on St. Cecilia's eve in 1695. George Frederick Handel, the English composer of German birth (1685-1759), penned an Ode for St. Cecilia's Day based on Dryden's poetry:

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man...

Inspired by the English poet W. H. Auden's (1907-1973) poem Anthem for St. Cecilia's Day, the highly-acclaimed English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) in 1940 wrote his Hymn to St. Cecilia aboard a ship returning to England after an extended stay in the U.S. Britten, by happy coincidence, was born on St. Cecilia's Day in 1913.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.

Ele Nash
Music Director