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Dies Irae for liturgical music
Dies Irae
(sent to me by a friend; author unknown)
Day of wrath, O Day of mourning!
Earth to ashes now returning!
Gather, by the millions, burning!
Cleansed at last by cataclysm
Butchered rhyme and battered rhythm,
Neopagan narcissism!
On that day, Lord, when thou comest,
And our dreadful hymnals thumbest,
Smite the ugliest and dumbest.
Smite them, Lord, yet of thy pity
Take their songsters to thy city:
Even Haugen, Haas, and Schutte.
Technorati Tags: humor, hymns, liturgy, Mass
Spare them on the stern condition
That they feel a true contrition
for the Worship III edition.
Doom them not to loss and ruin
While the darker storm is brewing!
They knew not what they were doing.
On that day when Palestrina
Dare not touch a celestina,
What will Sister Ballerina?
With thine eyes that pierce like lances
Still her heathen silly dances
And her flirting with Saint Francis.
Purge us of the prim and prissy,
Ditties fit for Meg or Missy,
Not for Francis, but a sissy.
Cantors who thought nothing grander
Than a sheaf of propaganda
Writ like office memoranda,
Raise them to thy room to bide in
Where their hearts and ears may widen
To the strains of Bach and Haydn.
Let their hearts within them falter,
Hearing, as they near thine altar,
Seraphs sing the Scottish Psalter.
Seize those devils set to pen a
Hymnal neutered of its men, ah,
Fling ‘em all to black Gehenna!
Fling them one and all to mangle
Their pronominals, and wrangle
Lest a participle dangle!
Who held manhood in derision,
Preaching double circumcision,
Suffer now their own revision.
Though the songs of Hell are naughty,
None by Handel or Scarlatti,
At the least they’ll have castrati.
Pitch, O Lord, the bald and raucous
Slogans of a leftist caucus
Down to Sheol, or Secaucus!
Save their singers, though: restore ‘em
To a silent sweet decorum,
Saecula per saeculorem.
Various are the throngs of heaven:
Some were lump, and some were leaven,
Some as lame as six or seven.
When the demons hear thy curses,
And this world’s dense fog disperses,
Heal the hobbled, not their verses.
Hush me too, Lord, when I grumble:
In thy mercy make me humble,
Lest On Turkey’s Wings I stumble.
Though Haugen sing “Hosea” evermore,
Save me, I pray! but keep me near the door. Amen.
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COMMENTS
Bravo to the author!
Posted by RC on 01/7/06 at 05:12 PM Compare with
I think you’re not getting the joke.
If you search for this phrase at Google:
“Butchered rhyme and battered rhythm”
you get one hit:
http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/10/dies_irae.html
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/7/06 at 06:46 PM Of course we still use the Dies Irae at Holy Trinity; did this morning, in fact.
Some of the lame modern musicians bring to mind that hymn which is so popular: “How can I keep (them) from singing?”
Bravo! As a long suffering (silently) listener of modern church music, I needed this laugh.
This Dies Irae goes right along with another hope I have. If anyone of you saw “Becket”, you will remember the dramatic excommunication scene with the monks turning their candles over to snuff them out as St Thomas Becket excommunicates an unrepentant nobleman. Well, I hope secretly that our Archbishop will do the same thing with Senators Kerry and Kennedy, Reps Markey, Meehan, Delahunt, Tierney, and Capuano, and Mayor Menino.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/8/06 at 06:34 AM I was saying compare Mozart with the music you hear at your weekly Sunday Mass.
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