Voices Found: Send out your light! VF 148, Psalm 43

 

Send out your light, Psalm 43

VF 148

Antiphon: Send out your light and truth so they may lead me

Give judgement for me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people

Deliver me from the deceitful and the wicked

For you are the God of my strength

Why have you put me from you?

Why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me?

Antiphon: Send out your light and your truth so they may lead me!

That I may go to the alter of God, to the God of my joy and gladness

And on the harp I will give thanks to you, O God my God

Antiphon: Send out your light and truth that they may lead me

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?

And why are you do disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to the Most High

Who is the help of my countenance and my God.

Antiphon: Send out your light and your truth so they may lead me. 

 

About the Psalm and the Antiphon

 Crying out for deliverance from  the ungodly,  wicked, and deceitful, David demands justice, perhaps after Absolom defected and was killed in battle. However, the cry for justice, light and truth is universal. In arranging this text, I  used vs 3, “Send out your light and truth so they may lead me!" as an antiphon,  repeating David's cry. For the music I adapted Hildegard's melody, Caritas abundat.

Antiphon 16

From the from the depths of the earth to the highest of stars

Divine Love, Caritas,  overflows to all.

She is so lovingly devoted to all Creation that

She gently gave even the Almighty

Her kiss of Peace.

Hildegard of Bingen, tr. Lisa Neufeld Thomas

About the music

 The Voices Found  hymnal  committee decided to offer  two accompaniments for this piece.  Dr. Carl Haywood, Professor of Music at Norfolk State University and service music editor of the hymnal supplement Lift Every Voice and Sing, graciously offered an ethereal arrangement consistent with Hildegard's style of chant.  His  medieval  style accompaniment is offered in The Leader's Guide.  While Hildegard did not write accompaniments, scholars think her nuns may have improvised such polyphonic voices. During her life, such early polyphony evolved in Paris, first notated by the composer Leonin ( d. 1201).  Dr. Haywood's accompaniment, in medieval   style, is published in the Leader's Guide to Voices Found.

Dr. Barry Rose, also a member of the Hymnal Committee and  a renown British musician who served at St. Paul's, London, offered a traditional  accompaniment to support congregational singing in the Anglican communion. It  is published in the pew edition of Voices Found.  

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