Coda: Music for end-of-life.
In February of 2024, Dr. Elaine Stratton Hild gave a captivating lecture concerning her recently published monograph, Music in Medieval Rituals for the End of Life. Dr. Hild’s work extends through not only her research, but her experience and current practice as a palliative care musician. Her research sheds valuable light on the use of plainchant outside of the familiar and much-studied liturgical contexts of the Mass Ordinary, Office, and processionals.
Dr. Hild’s talk reminded me of Vigil by Leigh Davis, a sound installation I encountered in the gothic chapel at Greenwood Cemetery during my frequent visits there while living in Sunset Park (Brooklyn) during the COVID-19 pandemic. By chance, I bumped into Davis on one of these visits, who explained her work with a local threshold choir as the inspiration for the multitracked composition that became her installation. At that point, I went on a “deep dive” of researching choral music related to palliative and end-of-life care, but given the unsafe singing conditions at that time, shelved any thoughts of singing or arranging music for threshold choirs. Dr. Hild’s research shook the dust off of these memories and provided a musical starting point: the relatively unknown collection of chants associated with deathbed rites collected in her book that had yet to be adapted into singable editions, arrangements, or compositions.
With support from the Institute for Advanced Study (now the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good) at Notre Dame, Dr. Hild collected the research that would become her monograph in 2018, and returned in 2024 to create recordings of the chants with members of the Basilica Schola and Sacred Music Program. These recordings can be heard here.
Extant Examples: Subvenite, Sancti Dei
The Solesmes editions of the Liber Usualis and Graduale Romanum (1961) include Subvenite, Sancti Dei among their chants for the burial service. However, while recorded versions of the Subvenite as it appears in the Liber Usualis are numerous, polyphonic versions that seem suitable for palliative use appear rare. A version of Subvenite-Suscipiat, albeit with a slightly altered melody, appears in many of the end-of-life liturgies catalogued by Dr. Hild, who notes its prominence in late medieval deathbed rituals for its association of the text with one’s last breath, and as an example of the outwardly grieving quality associated with Mode 4.
Among the exceptions is this arresting three-part treble setting by Antonio Musch (1809-1888). You can find the score on IMSLP. While this version does not appear to be based on the Solesmes version of the chant melody, the Responsory is present in alternatim with the “suscipiat” and “requiem aeternam,” both labeled in the score as canto gregoriano.
Forthcoming!