Hymn to St Cecilia — Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Benjamin Britten, regarded as the greatest British composer of the mid-20th Century, was born on 22nd November, the feast of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. As an adult, he struggled for years to find an appropriate text for his Ode to this saint. He wrote in his diary in 1935: “I’m having great difficulty in finding Latin words for a proposed Hymn to St Cecilia. Spent morning hunting.”

Later that year, Britten met the poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) and together they would write a number of choral pieces. There was obviously a profound artistic admiration between them, but their relationship fractured over time, and the Hymn to St Cecilia was the last project they collaborated on. The text, written by Auden in 1940, follows in the tradition of odes, including evocations to the muse and solos where each voice describes a different musical instrument.

Britten completed the final draft of this marvellous work aboard the American ship M. S. Axel Johnson on his return from the United States to England in April 1942, crossing a perilous Atlantic Ocean which was in the midst of the Second World War. As the composer had left the USA, the initial drafts of this (and his celebrated Ceremony of Carols) had been seized by customs officials, who feared the scores might contain sensitive or secret information written in secret code. Despite these zealous officials, the Atlantic proved to be a most productive writing space for Britten, who on that voyage completed two of his most enduring works.

Text:

In a garden shady this holy lady

With rev’rent cadence and subtle psalm,

Like a black swan as death came on

Pour’d 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

Thunder’d out on the Roman air

Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited,

Mov’d to delight by the melody,

White as an orchid she rode quite naked:

In an oyster shell on top of the sea;

At sounds so entrancing the angels dancing

Came out of their trance into time again,

And around the wicked in Hell’s abysses

The huge flame flicker’d and eased their pain.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

Translated Daughter, come down and startle

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

I cannot grow;

I have no shadow

To run away from,

I only play.

I cannot err;

There is no creature

Whom I belong to,

Whom I could wrong.

I am defeat

When it knows it

Can now do nothing

By suffering.

All you lived through,

Dancing because you

No longer need it

For any deed.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

Translated Daughter, come down and startle

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall,

O calm of spaces unafraid of weight,

Where Sorrow is herself, forgetting all

The gaucheness of her adolescent state,

Where Hope within the altogether strange

From ev’ry outworn image is released,

And Dread born whole and normal like a beast

Into a world of truths that never change:

Restore our fallen day, O re-arrange.

O dear white children casual as birds,

Playing among the ruined languages,

So small beside their large confusing words,

So gay against the greater silences

Of dreadful things you did: O hang the head,

Impetuous child with the tremendous brain,

O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain,

Lost innocence who wished your lover dead,

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

O cry created as the bow of sin

Is drawn across our trembling violin.

O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain.

O law drumm’d out by hearts against the still

Long winter of our intellectual will.

That what has been may never be again,

O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath

Of convalescents on the shores of death.

O bless the freedom that you never chose.

O trumpets that unguarded children blow

About the fortress of their inner foe.

O wear your tribulation like a rose.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

Translated Daughter, come down and startle

Composing mortals with immortal fire.