Some thoughts on St Cecilia?
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
This well-known invocation by W. H. Auden focuses on St.
Cecilia as Muse. However, it is important to distinguish between
the historical saint and the artistic representations of her.
Fortunately, unlike many recently discredited saints, such as
the English patron St. George, there is no disputing the fact
that Cecilia was a real person and not a legend.
Some reference books are more than a little vague about
dates, saying that she was martyred in Rome in the second or third
century. Others are more specific and it was long accepted that
she died in the year A.D. 230. However, more recent scholarship
claims that she died in Sicily about the year A.D. 176 under the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius. This creates problems, as we shall later
discover. The Church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome is reputedly
built on the site of the house in which she lived. The original
church was built in the fourth century, her remains were placed
there in the ninth century and the church was rebuilt in 1599.
So, who was she and what do we know about her life? By far the
best account of her life in English is to be found in The Second
Nun's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This is almost entirely
drawn from the thirteenth century Golden Legend. This is a mediaeval
book of ecclesiastical lore, lives of the saints, commentaries
on services, homilies etc. One of its sources was the Legenda
Aurea of Jacobus a Voragine, or Jacopo de' Varazze (1230-1298)
who was Archbishop of Genoa. At any rate, for Chaucer this source
was extremely contemporaneous.
The Second Nun's Tale is quite long and detailed. There
is a Prologue, four stanzas long and each containing seven lines,
which concludes:
Thou with thy garland wroght of rose and lilie;
Thee mene I, mayde and martir, seint Cecilie!
This is followed by an invocation to the Virgin Mary, Inuocacio
ad Mariam. This is nearly twice the length of the Prologue, being
eight stanzas in length and each one containing eight lines. The
third section reverts to the seven-line format and the five stanzas
are devoted to an interpretation of the name of the saint, Intepretacio
nominis Cecilie. Finally there is The Second Nun's Tale, which
is four hundred and thirty four lines long.
Chaucer gives five interpretations of the name Cecilie;
each is beautifully expressed and describes various virtues and
qualities of the Saint. They are: lily of heaven, the way for
the blind, contemplation of heaven and the active life, as if
lacking in blindness, a heaven for people to gaze at.
The story of Saint Cecilia
The story of Saint Cecilia is a dramatic one. The young
Roman maid was brought up from the cradle in the faith of Christ
and His gospel. She prayed to keep her virginity. She was married
to a young man, Valerian. On their wedding night she made her
husband swear to keep the secret that she was about to tell him.
She revealed that she had a guardian angel that would slay Valerian
if he touched her either in love or lust. Valerian was naturally
somewhat suspicious and demanded to see the angel. Cecilia told
him that he must first go three miles along the Appian Way to
be baptised by an old man named Urban. (This was Pope Urban I
who succeeded in A.D. 222 and was martyred by beheading on the
25th May, A.D. 230. This obviously conflicts with the date A.D.
176. However, if we revert to the long accepted date of A.D. 230,
and the place of her martyrdom as Rome, it also obviates the necessity
of the translation of her body from Sicily.)
After his baptism Valerian returned to Cecilia and was visited
by the angel Valerian asked that his brother, Tiburce should also
find grace. The angel told them that they would both bear the
palm of martyrdom. Tiburce was taken to meet Urban. Subsequently
they were questioned by the prefect Almachius, and Maximus, the
registrar, who ordered them to be executed having refused to bow
to Jove, the two brothers were beheaded. When Maximus saw their
spirits glide into Heaven he wept and Almachius had him scourged
to death with whips of lead.
Cecilia was then tried by Almachius and refused to abjure her
Christianity. She was ordered to be burnt to ashes in a bath of
flame. She sat in the bath for a day and a night without even
sweating. Finally, a man was sent down to slay her in the bath.
Having delivered three strokes to her neck, her executioner failed
to kill her. There was an ordinance that only three strokes were
allowed. All the Christian folk bound up her wounds and she continued
to preach and pray for three days. She sent for Urban and asked
him to build a house for her perpetual church. He took her body
after dark and buried it and hallowed the church of St. Cecilia
In the prologue of The Canon's Yeoman's Tale that follows,
we are told that the telling of the life of St. Cecilia had occupied
the pilgrims for five miles of their journey and that by then
they had arrived at the village of Boughton-under-Blean.
Remembering St. Cecilia
So much for the story of her life and death. It might be
supposed that the route by which her memory has been kept alive
was through the works of poets, writers and musicians. However,
this does not initially appear to be the case. It seems that the
association of Cecilia with music only dates back to the fifteenth
century. In fact, a long poem published in Florence in 1594 makes
no reference to her musicianship. It was painters who first seemed
to link Cecilia with music. There is a painting by Raphael (1483-1520)
showing her holding a small organ in her hand. Domenichino (1581-1641)
portrayed her three times: as a composer with a quill in her hand
and an organ in the background, and again as a violinist, and
finally as a bass-violist. Poussin (1594-1665) showed her playing
what appears to be a two manual harpsichord. In the eighteenth
century Lawrence (1769-1830) depicted her sitting by, but not
playing, an organ, and Reynolds (1723-1792) portrayed Mrs. Billington
as Cecilia the singer.
Her tomb is under the high altar of the church of St. Cecilia
in Trastevere in Rome. When the church was rebuilt in 1599 the
sculptor Stefano Maderno examined her remains. His inscription
says: "Behold the body of the most holy virgin, Cecilia,
whom I myself saw lying uncorrupt in her tomb. I have in this
marble expressed for thee the same saint in the very same posture
and body". She is shown Iying on her right side with her
head facing downwards and with a scarf over her hair. Both her
arms are extended towards her knees and the fingers of the right
hand are also extended. She looks as though she is peacefully
asleep.
The first record of a musical festival in her honour is
of one held at Evreux in Normandy in 1570. There was a competition
in composition and one of the prize-winners was Orlandus Lassus.
When the Academy of Music was founded in Rome in 1584, Cecilia
was adopted as the patroness of Church Music. It is probably about
this time that the 22nd of November was chosen as the date of
her Patronal festival. The first record of a celebration of St.
Cecilia's Day in Britain is in London in 1683. These celebrations
took the form of a church service for which an Ode was especially
composed.
Literary works
Surprisingly the literary works dedicated to St. Cecilia
are few in number and all relatively short. Dryden's Song for
St. Cecilia's Day, 1687 is only seven stanzas, or sixty-three
lines long. He extols the power of music and harmony and refers
to a variety of instruments: trumpet, Jubal's "chorded shell,"
flute, lute, violins and "sacred organ". Cecilia is
only mentioned once in the penultimate stanza. After speaking
of Orpheus he says:
But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher:
When to her Organ vocal breath was given
An Angel heard, and straight appear'd
Mistaking Earth for Heaven.
Dryden was also the author of Alexander's Feast, Or, The
Power Of Music. This is a slightly longer poem. There is the usual
mixture of historical and mythological characters: Philip and
Thais, Olympia, Bacchus, Darius, Lydia, Timotheus and Helen of
Troy. Ten lines from the end comes the one and only reference
to Cecilia:
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocalframe.
Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day 1708 is eight stanzas, or
one hundred and thirty-four lines long. He details the qualities
of music to arouse emotions such as joy, exaltation, balm, sleep
and the power of martial music in history and mythology to call
to arms. Ten lines from the end Cecilia is mentioned and the poem
concludes:
Of Orpheus now no more let Poets tell,
To bright Cecilia greater power is given;
His numbers raised a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heaven.
Of course, there are other references to Cecilia but we
have to come to the twentieth century before we find the next
significant work. This is Auden's Anthem for St. Cecilia's Day.
It was dedicated to Benjamin Britten and set to music as Hymn
to St. Cecilia op. 27 (1942).
In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
We can only admire Auden's skilful use of the medial rhyme
but it is a pity that his poetic licence introduced a black swan.
This bird is not indigenous to Europe and would not have been
known in Roman times. Perhaps we would all feel happier with Orlando
Gibbons who, in his First Set of Madrigals and Motets of Five
Parts 1612, set the words:
The silver swan, who, living, had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silver throat.
Incidentally, the silver swan is the centrepiece of the
Arms of The Worshipful Company of Musicians.
Musical tributes to St.
Cecilia
Many musicians made settings for the celebrations of St.
Cecilia's Day. Purcell composed for 1683 and 1692 and wrote a
Te Deum and Jubilate in D in 1694. Blow wrote settings in 1684,
1691 and 1695 and composed a Te Deum and Jubilate in 1695. Jeremiah
Clarke set Alexander's Feast in 1697 and Handel did likewise in
1736. Pope's Ode was set by Greene in 1708 as his doctoral thesis.
Boyce wrote The Charms of Harmony Displayed in 1738 and See famed
Apollo and the Nine in 1739; both are odes to St. Cecilia. Samuel
Wesley, Hubert Parry and Herbert Howells also made notable contributions.
Apart from London, celebrations took place at Winchester,
Gloucester, Devizes, Oxford and Salisbury. Early in the eighteenth
century services were held in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
and in Edinburgh from 1696. There the concert hall is named after
the Saint.
Brewer, in his Dictionary of Phrase & Fable says: "She
is the patron Saint of the blind, being herself blind...".
References to this occur elsewhere: in fact two of Chaucer's five
interpretations of her name include this fact. An archaeological
exploration of the site of the area near her burial place revealed
that there was a shrine to Bona Dea Restituta, a Roman goddess
who healed blindness. The Latin for blindness is caecitas, which
could obviously be corrupted into the name Cecilia.
Conculsion
At every turn in writing this article I have been confronted with
a mass of contradictory information. Myth and history have been
so interwoven over the centuries that it is difficult to sift
truth from fiction. There is scope for someone, but not me, to
write an article on the Cecilian Movement. This had its roots
in the end of the eighteenth century but it was mainly a nineteenth
century movement for the reform of Catholic Church music.
Let me end with two thoughts. Brewer says, "She is
also patroness of musicians and inventor of the organ". He
justifies this by reference to Dryden: "Inventress of the
vocal frame". Many writers repeat this information and there
are many organists who believe this to be true. Of course we do
not imagine some vast building frame towering to the ceiling to
support the 32-foot pipes of a huge Father Willis four manual
instrument, but perhaps we envisage her seated at some small portable
instrument. There were certainly small hydraulic organs in existence
in Egypt some two and a half centuries before the birth of Christ.
The mistake appears to have arisen from a misinterpretation
of a sentence in her Acts: "Cantantibus organis in corde
suo soli domino decantabat". While musical instruments were
playing she was singing in her heart to God alone. The etymology
of "organon" (Greek), and "organum" (Latin)
also refers to the human voice, that is to say the organ of speech
or singing. It is interesting to note that many poets were wary
of the word "organ" and seem to have used it deliberately
with some ambiguity.
On a more positive note, The Worshipful Company of Musicians
celebrates St. Cecilia's Day annually with a service that rotates
between St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Westminster
Cathedral. In addition to this, the City of London holds an annual
St. Ceciliatide Festival. We also have an excellent body of Fellows
in the name of the Academy of St. Cecilia, which now holds one
of its annual meetings on the last Saturday in November in the
Church of St. Margaret, Lothbury. Let us continue to celebrate
her in music and fellowship.
Graham Hawkes, Treasurer, ASC
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