"Da pacem Domine"

A synchronistic moment happened to me while I was searching the web for music. At the same time, I was looking at what the web was presenting to me, I prayed to God asking for His healing for all those who hurt and those who are in desperate need of a help from all this hate and fire and heat – I also took the opportunity to throw in a plea for helping me find the right piece of music I was looking for.  I had just finished with an “Amen” when my eye caught a phrase on a web page, “Da pacem Domine.”  Thus began a magnificent journey. 

                  Da pacem Domine                 Give peace in our time,

                  in diebus nortis                      O Lord,

                  quia non est alius                   because there is none other

                  qui pugnet pro nobis              that fighteth for us,

                  nisi tu Deus noster.                but only thou, O Lord.

This Latin text is from biblical verses from 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles and Psalm 72.  Martin Luther had used these words in a hymn he wrote in 1524, Verleih uns Frieden.  Arvo Pärt used this same text and set it to a choral piece to fulfil a commission from Jordi Savall, two days after the Madrid bombings on March 11, 2004 as his personal tribute to the victims.   

As a reminder, the 13th century was a period of too many wars to reference.  This was the time of Dante, Marco Polo, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Genghis and Kublai Khan, Roger Bacon, Francis of Assisi, to name a few.  Pärt scored this for four-part choir for four soloists.  His composition is based on four medieval ideas.  First, a Gregorian chant, a cantus firmus (a fixed song) for the alto. Second, a parallel organum, a two-part composition that parallels and doubles notes. Third, the hocket technique, which is a shock, sudden interruption, hitch or hiccup in the melody. Fourth, a Machaut cadence, a harmonization of the phrase diminutions – which Pärtuses at times to create dissonant octaves. 

Synchronicity.  I was brought to a piece of music that was written in tribute to a fiery bombing in Madrid in 2004, which was in parallel with the fires—good and bad—of the 13th century, as a prayer to the fire, darkness and chaos of our own time, as way to calm the intense heat of the Allegro movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.  Jung would have been pleased.  I am most grateful.

As you listen to this magnificent music, please consider the words from the judgement of the hexagram Li, The Clinging, Fire:

What is dark clings to what is light and so enhances the brightness of the latter.  A luminous thing giving out light must have within itself something that perseveres; otherwise it will in time burn itself out.  Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings, in order that it may continue to shine. 

In these times of fire, hate, darkness and chaos, be a light, persevere.

Da pacem Domine.  May that which is timeless fill all our days.