The Inklings of Oxford - Tolkien, Lewis and Friends

The Inklings of Oxford: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Their Friends by Harry Lee Poe and James Ray Veneman

He Come from the Glory

We are moving along pretty quickly on our Christmas CD project and planning on having it out in MP3 as well as CD by Thanksgiving (we'll keep you posted). The working title is He Come from the Glory and features these songs:

(We have now finished and you can listen to some audio clips and download the album in MP3 here.)

• He Come from the Glory
• God Rest You Merry, Gentleman
• Patapan
• The Holly and the Ivy
• Mary Walks Amid the Thorn
• The Seven Joys of Mary
• In the Bleak Midwinter
  
• There’s a Song in the Air
• Rise Up Shepherd and Follow
• We Three Kings
• Brightest and Best
• What Child is This?
• Angels We Have Heard on High
• Go Tell It on the Mountain
• Joy to the World

The Oxyrhynchus Hymn

The Oxyrhynchus Hymn (P. Oxy. XV 1786) is the earliest known manuscript of a Christian hymn - dating from the 3rd century AD - to contain both lyrics and musical notation. It is now kept at the Papyrology Rooms of the Sackler Library, Oxford. The text, in Greek, poetically invokes silence so that the Holy Trinity may be praised.

The surviving text is fragmentary, thus there are quite a number of suggested reconstructions and translations on the web. The version which this recording - performed by Gregorio Paniagua and the Atrium Musicae de Madrid, from "Musique de la Grèce antique" - follows is the following:

"(Spoken) [Σε Πάτερ κόσμων, Πάτερ αἰώνων, μέλπωμεν] ὁμοῦ, πᾶσαι τε Θεοῦ λόγιμοι δο[ῦλο]ι. Ὅσα κ[όσμος ἔχει πρὸς ἐπουρανίων ἁγίων σελάων.]
(Sung) [Πρ]υτανήω σιγάτω, μηδ' ἄστρα φαεσφόρα λ[αμπέ]
(Spoken) σθων, [ἀπ]ολει[όντων] ῥ[ιπαὶ πνοιῶν, πηγαὶ]
(Sung) ποταμῶν ῥοθίων πᾶσαι. Υμνούντων δ' ἡμῶν [Π]ατέρα χ' Υἱὸν χ' Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα, πᾶσαι δυνάμεις ἐπιφωνούντων· Ἀμήν, Ἀμήν. Κράτος, αἶνος [ἀεὶ καὶ δόξα Θεοὶ δωτῆρι μόνῳ πάντων] ἀγαθῶν· Ἀμήν, Ἀμήν."

I have shown the reconstructed text not present in the surviving text in brackets and denoted spoken and sung parts (some parts are merely spoken due to the absence of any notation for those areas).