From Heavenly Harmony
My Beloved Spake & Sang unto Me
by Ken Myers
In May and June of 1984, Pope John Paul II gave three homilies exploring the erotic verses of theSong of Songs. The addresses were part of the four-year series of General Audiences developing the theology of the body. In the Song of Songs, said the pope, "The truth about love . . . cannot be separated from the language of the body." And since the language in this setting is poetic, not a lecture on anatomy, various delightful aspects of the body are evoked with imagery from the outdoors: gardens and hills, honey and milk, fruit and spices, lilies and cedars, fawns and doves.
There is a movement in this poetry from the rich variety of the natural world to the contours of two specific bodies to something deeper. The pastoral imagery suggests the bodies of the lovers, but the bodies themselves convey more than flesh and blood, for "love unleashes a special experience of the beautiful," said the pope, "which focuses on what is visible, but at the same time involves the entire person." The delights of the senses "speak of the gift and the self-giving of the person."
This trajectory from flora and fauna outdoors to woman and man indoors to the inner life of a bride and groom points even further up and further in. Following the Jewish tradition of seeing the Song of Songs as an allegory of Yahweh's relationship with Israel, Christian readers of these verses have perceived the presence of a divine Lover. For many, it was the Bridegroom awaited by the Church; so Augustine: "The Canticle of Canticles sings a sort of spiritual rapture experienced by holy souls contemplating the nuptial relationship between Christ the King and his queen-city, the Church." For Origen and others, the intimacies depicted describe an individual soul's reciprocal love of her Lover-King.
In his commentary on the Song of Songs, Paul Griffiths argues that this text demands receptive engagement:
It is certainly possible to hear the Song as an auditor only, preserving distance with the cynical smile of the worldly wise or the analytical sneer of the scholar. But that stance is not the one the Song's text calls you to. To hear it responsively, and with attention, is to be made breathless and to have your own loves reconfigured by what its lovers say.
Delicate Desire
In the second half of the sixteenth century, fewer composers had done more to express in music the relationship of the Church and of the individual soul to the Bridegroom and King than Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525–1594). In addition to over 100 masses and 35 Magnificat settings, he composed hundreds of motets, offertories, and hymns for liturgical use. But in 1584, he published a set of works that were not intended to be heard within the context of the Church's worship, but that could be said to portray the inner life of the Church more intensely and vividly than any offertory or hymn. The Canticum Canticorum was a collection of 29 short motets with texts from the Vulgate translation of the Song of Songs, intended to be performed as sacred chamber music—not an uncommon practice at the time in Rome and elsewhere.
In his dedication of Canticum Canticorum to Pope Gregory XIII, Palestrina warned that these works were composed in "a style of music a little more lively than normally used in other sacred compositions." Most modern listeners will miss the nuances that distinguish these pieces from familiar liturgical motets such as Sicut cervus or Scapulis suis, which sustain a serene energy not unlike these motets. Some performances bring out that liveliness more than others. For example, the 1995 recording (recently reissued) with the ensemble Magnificat, conducted by Philip Cave, features only one singer per part (which may be how the works were originally heard). Such reduced vocal forces achieve a greater intimacy and allow the emotional delicacy of the poetry to glow more evidently.
Palestrina conveys the passion of the Song of Songs very subtly. For example, the last line in one of the pieces is "I sat down under his shade—that of the man I desired—and his fruit was sweet to my throat" (Song 2:3). The first phrase of this line is set simply and straightforwardly: Sub umbra illius is sung with no repetition or ornamentation. The next phrase designates the bride's lover with a seven-syllable Latin phrase, quem desideraveram. This term is unusual, since the lover is more typically named as dilectus, which Griffiths translated as "my delightful man." Palestrina dramatizes the desire by introducing this phrase with the four lower voices singing together in harmony, while the soprano sustains alone the last note of the previous phrase. When the four lower voices reach the last syllable, the soprano then sings of the lover, and as she completes her reference to him, the other voices come in one after the other, repeating the phrase with greater and greater rhythmic complexity. The final clause—"and his fruit was sweet to my throat"—is the most intricate and prolonged section of the work; we hear—we know with our ears—that the beloved wants the experience of sweetness to be sustained as long as
possible.
Each of the 29 pieces in Palestrina's Canticum Canticorum has similar moments of delicate desire. Paul Griffiths has suggested that the truth in this book of the Scriptures is meant to be received like a kiss:
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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