Tag: Te lucis ante terminum

Roundup: Trilingual antiwar song, rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, “Sacred Harp Singing in the Age of AI,” and more

Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

PRAYER: “God, I Wake” by Rev. Maren Tirabassi: A morning prayer for Ordinary Time.

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SONG: “Sólo le pido a Dios” (I Only Ask of God), performed by the Alma Sufí Ensamble: This is a cover of a 1978 song written in Spanish by the Argentine folk rock singer-songwriter León Gieco—a personal prayer that he would not be unfeeling, not numb to injustice. In a November 2023 collaboration with the Alma Sufí Ensamble, Gieco joined the Argentine Jewish cantor Gastón Saied (also a guest artist) and the ensemble’s own Nuri Nardelli, a practicing Sufi (Muslim mystic), in singing the song in Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic, respectively. “Three languages, one heart. And one prayer for peace in the Middle East,” they write. View the original Spanish lyrics and English translation here.

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VIDEOS:

The following videos are two of thirteen—the ones focusing on the continent’s Christian heritage—from the docuseries Africa’s Cultural Landmarks, produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the World Monuments Fund and directed by Sosena Solomon. The series was commissioned to coincide with the reopening of the museum’s Arts of Africa galleries this May, after being closed for four years as part of a major redesign and renovation of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

>> “Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia”: “Stepping into one of the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela is an experience unlike any other. Carved directly from volcanic rock, from the top to bottom, unlike traditional buildings built from the ground up, the eleven wondrous churches of Lalibela are monumental expressions of devotion and symbols of Ethiopia’s spiritual heartland. Visually captivating and rich with personal insights from priests entrusted with care of the churches, this documentary reveals how these sanctuaries—both magnificent and fragile—face the constant threat of erosion. Meet the dedicated guardians balancing conservation and sacred duty, to ensure Lalibela’s living pilgrimage tradition thrives for generations to come.”

Bete Giyorgis, Lalibela, Ethiopia
Bete Giyorgis (Church of Saint George), Lalibela, Ethiopia, 13th century

>> “Rock-Hewn Churches of Tigray, Ethiopia”: “High in Ethiopia’s Northern Highlands, the rock-hewn churches of Tigray stand as breathtaking sanctuaries of faith carved into sandstone cliffs. For centuries, some 120 rock-hewn churches, and the paintings and artifacts preserved within their walls, were protected by their remote locations. However, during the 2020–2022 war in Tigray, some churches were targeted, and the use of heavy weapons resulted in vibrations that caused cracks in the stone. Through evocative imagery and intimate testimonies, this documentary explores the endurance of these remarkable sites of devotion, as local priests reflect on the spiritual and cultural legacies at risk.”

Madonna and Child (Abuna Yemata, Ethiopia)
Virgin and Child wall painting, 15th century, inside Abuna Yemata Guh (The Chapel Near the Sky) in Tigray, Ethiopia, which contains the best-preserved medieval paintings in the region

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ESSAY: “Shaped for People: Sacred Harp Singing in the Age of AI” by Mary Margaret Alvarado: From Image journal’s summer 2025 issue: “What is that, I thought, when I first heard shape note singing. It was groaning, and some voices keened. It was loud. It was muscular, this music. There was glory, but it was not pretty. The voices did not blend, and the sound was not nice. All I knew was that I wanted to hear it again. Maybe it seemed to me like an aesthetic that does not lie? I feel surrounded, often, by aesthetics that do lie. . . . So there’s a contrarian appeal to a song that sounds sung by humans in their (young, old, crooked, fat, gorgeous, hairy, halt, jacked, sexy, bald, injured, hale) human bodies . . .”

Writer Mary Margaret Alvarado reflects on her experiences participating in shape-note hymn sings, a democratic form of communal music making using the “sacred harp” of the human voice. She provides an abridged history of such singing, which developed in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New England but is now carried on throughout the US and in the UK and Germany. I’d love to take part in a shape-note hymn sing someday, as I’ve long been drawn to the sound and tradition, which I know only from recordings. Besides the small gatherings organized by local communities, there are also large conventions, and I’ve been intrigued to learn that, despite the hymns’ deep rootedness in Christianity, non-Christians are often among the attendees.

Below are a few of the hymns Alvarado mentions in her essay: “Youth like the Spring Will Soon Be Gone” (MORNING SUN), “David’s Lamentation” over the death of his son Absalom, and “I’m Not Ashamed of Jesus” (CORINTH). Traditionally, the singers start by singing through an entire verse using only the four syllables of the Sacred Harp notation system (fa, sol, la, mi) as their lyrics, to orient themselves to the tune.

To browse previous Art & Theology posts that have featured hymns from the Sacred Harp tradition—albeit not all performed in a traditional manner; several are arranged for soloists or otherwise stylistically adapted—see https://artandtheology.org/tag/sacred-harp/.

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NEW ALBUM: Radiant Dawn by the Gesualdo Six: Released August 1 by the British vocal ensemble the Gesualdo Six, this album features “an ethereal combination of trumpet and voices to explore different shades of light . . . from the soft, golden glow of a summer evening as shadows lengthen to the shimmering of moonlight on calm waters,” writes director Owain Park. “Some texts contrast the terror of darkness with the brilliance of dazzling sunlight; others explore the blurred boundaries between heaven and earth. Plainchant threads this programme together . . .” A range of composers are represented, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Several of the songs are based on biblical episodes—Simeon’s response to having held the Christ child in the temple, the transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, the arrival of the holy women at Jesus’s tomb on Easter morning, the walk to Emmaus—or passages such as Psalm 5:2 (“O hearken thou . . .”) and Revelation 21:23 (“And the city had no need of the sun . . .”). There are bedtime prayers, a meditation on the glory of the angels, an O Antiphon for the approach of Christmas, and settings of contemporary poems, like “Grandmother Moon” by the Mi’kmaq poet Mary Louise Martin and “Aura” by Emily Berry, about the death of her mother. View the track list at https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68465.

Below, from the album, is the Gesualdo Six’s performance of “Night Prayer” by Alec Roth, a setting of the Te lucis ante terminum, featuring Matilda Lloyd on trumpet. “The stark setting reminds me of the ravages of war,” one YouTube user remarks. “The singing, of a prayer sent out over the carnage, blessing those who have suffered. Sacred space indeed.”

“Te lucis ante terminum”: A bedtime prayer for all ages

Victoria Emily Jones5 Comments

When I was little, my bedtime routine involved me propping up my plush Precious Moments doll beside me on my bedside floor, her hands Velcroed together, so that she could accompany me in praying this prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

This rhyming quatrain from colonial New England,[1] simple though it is, cultivated in me a warm sense of God’s care and protection through the night.

Perhaps the latter half sounds morbid—but keep in mind that it comes from a time when child mortality rates were much higher, as, given the lack of advanced medicine and effective vaccines, illnesses were frequent and often fatal. A later variation of the prayer omits the reference to death, replacing the second couplet with the cutesier “Thy love guard me through the night, / And wake me with the morning light.”

I will both lie down and sleep in peace,
for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety.

—Psalm 4:8

As an adult, I’ve encountered another evening prayer that reminds me of “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”—similar content, same meter, but likely dating all the way back to the fifth or sixth century, and originally written in Latin. It’s called Te lucis ante terminum (Before the Ending of the Day):

Te lucis ante terminum,
Rerum Creator poscimus,
Ut pro tua clementia
Sis præsul et custodia.

Procul recedant somnia,
Et noctium phantasmata;
Hostemque nostrum comprime,
Ne polluantur corpora.

Præsta, Pater piissime,
Patrique compar Unice,
Cum Spiritu Paraclito
Regnans per omne sæculum.
Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That with Thy wonted favor Thou
Wouldst be our Guard and Keeper now.

From all ill dreams defend our eyes,
From nightly fears and fantasies;
Tread under foot our ghostly foe,
That no pollution we may know.

O Father, that we ask be done,
Through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son;
Who, with the Holy Ghost and Thee,
Doth live and reign eternally.

Trans. John Mason Neale

This prayer is sung liturgically as the office hymn at Compline in the Roman Rite. It was originally, and continues to be, sung to plainsong melodies from the Liber Usualis (Usual Book) and the Sarum Rite, such as this one:

Spanish Chant Manuscript Page 203
Te lucis ante terminum from an antiphonary, Spain, 1575–1625. Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver. [object record]

(To hear it chanted in English, see the album Lighten Our Darkness: Music for the Close of Day by the Cambridge Singers.)

The great English High Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis wrote two five-voice settings of the hymn in 1575, of which the ferial tone is performed here by The King’s Singers:

In 1998 J. Aaron McDermid of North Dakota composed a setting, performed by The Singers—Minnesota Choral Artists under the direction of Matthew Culloton:

McDermid writes,

Upon my first reading [of Te lucis] I was immediately struck by the color and imagination inherent in the language, particularly in the second stanza – where the deep calm of the previous verse is replaced by foreboding images of the shades of night. A beautiful symmetry is achieved by the addition of the eloquent Gloria Patri that brings the hymn to a close. Through the patient and fluid unfolding of the Latin, St. Ambrose[2] has imbued this hymn with a sense of comfort and warmth, offering hope for a light to illumine the dark hours to come.

The last setting I want to share is Owain Park’s from 2020, released under the title “Night Prayer.” His was inspired by ancient plainchant and was specially composed for virtual choirs during COVID-19. Listen to the premiere performance by his vocal consort, the Gesualdo Six (Park is the singer at bottom right):

The photographs by Ash Mills in this video, some of them long-exposure (gorgeous!), are of Salisbury Cathedral’s annual “From Darkness to Light” Advent procession, in which the medieval church is gradually filled with the light of over one thousand candles.

For an album recording of Park’s “Night Prayer,” available on Spotify and other streaming platforms, see When Sleep Comes: Evening Meditations for Voices and Saxophone from Tenebrae.

These are just a few of the many musical settings of Te lucis ante terminum that have been composed over the centuries. For a list of others, see https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Te_lucis_ante_terminum.

The music gives the words a gravitas and a beauty that I think they lack on their own. Why not choose one of these as a bedtime track to play for your little one as they fall asleep! Or for your own anxious soul. The pronouns are first-person plural, indicating that this prayer is intended to be prayed in community. Make it a family listening event. And if you feel so inclined, you might even try chanting along with the choir of Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto!

NOTES

1. Although I’ve seen “As I Lay Me Down to Sleep” spuriously attributed as “Old English,” its earliest known appearance in print is in the 1737 edition of the New England Primer, a popular reading textbook used in the American colonies, published in Boston.

2. Abbot S.-G. Pimont, author of Les Hymnes du Bréviaire romaine (Paris, 1874), is the one who attributed the text of Te lucis to Ambrose of Milan (ca. 339–397), but this authorship claim was rejected by the Benedictine editors of The Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton, 1912) and by patristics scholar Luigi Biraghi and today is generally regarded as false.