Today’s scripture set off songs in my head as I read it. Most of these songs quote the readings: “We Will Rise Again” by Haas; “Bless the Lord, My Soul,” by Berthier; “Come to the Water” by Foley, SJ; “Come to Me” by Joncas; “Come to Me, O Weary Traveler” by J. Michael Thompson; “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” to the tune FINGLASWEST by Joncas. One piece only has one line of text in common, but it always pops into my head with the Isaiah reading we have today: “Have Ye Not Known?” from Randall Thompson’s A Peaceable Kingdom. It actually quotes Isaiah 40:21, just before the first reading today. My undergraduate choir sang the entire work for one of our concerts. Here are links to the two final movements I’ll reflect on today:
“Have Ye Not Known?”
“Ye Shall Have a Song”
In Thompson’s choral work, these words from the King James translation are striking and insistent. “Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?” Rather than continuing with Isaiah’s meditation on God as Creator and ruler over the heavens and earth, Thompson follows these urgent words with text from ten chapters earlier, Isaiah 30:29. “Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord.” These words close the entire choral work.
The way that last movement of the work responds to the insistence of “Have ye not heard?” evokes the comfort and accompaniment that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel today. What is this message we should have heard of already? It starts softly and gently, “Ye shall have a song!” and gradually builds through many repetitions of “and gladness of heart.” It grows in the same way a smile spreads across a person’s face as Jesus’ message of peace sinks in. The melody dances along the words “as when one goeth with the pipe” as one’s feet would dance to a flute, if we still visited loved ones by foot and played music along the way. If the dancer is carrying anything, her burden must certainly be light. It regains gravity at the words “to come into the mountain of the Lord” and the volume swells as if to fill the whole mountain. In recognizing God as Creator and our ultimate caretaker, we realize “we shall have a song!”
Molly Mattingly
I grew up in north of Chicago with my parents, brother, and sister. My parents led the 5:00pm Mass music ensemble at my home parish while I was growing up, so you could also say I grew up in a church choir! Music has always been a part of my life, through school choirs, piano lessons, and music ministry. I accompanied and sang in choirs in grade school and at Carmel Catholic High School. During that time, I also swam on my YMCA swim team and worked as a lifeguard and swim instructor at a local park district.
After high school, I studied Music Education and Music Theory at Ithaca College, with an emphasis in piano and choral direction. There I was also co-director of our Catholic Community’s music ministry. I graduated from Ithaca in ’09, and like many of my classmates who graduated the year the recession peaked, was lucky enough to find a place in grad school. I got my Masters in Sacred Music from the University of Notre Dame (go Irish!), where I was involved with the Folk Choir and Notre Dame Vision retreat program. Most recently, I spent two years in Wexford, Ireland as a member and House Director of the House of Brigid, a lay community of young adults dedicated to the renewal of the Church in Ireland through catechesis and music. (Check out their website if you want to see other blog posts I’ve written and see beautiful pictures of Ireland.) And now, my music ministry vocation brought me to Creighton University and St. John’s, where I am the music director at the parish and Campus Ministry!
