Lent with Herbert Day 19: Gladness of the Best

On our Lenten Journey through Herbert’s poem Prayer, using the sonnets in my new book After Prayer, we have completed Herbert’s beautiful ascent back into bliss, a bliss which is all the more  real because it has passed through and transmuted sorrow, and in our last post we saw how Herbert focused that ascent and centred it in Christ in the single image ‘Exalted Manna’.

Now, having been lifted up by Christ, he has a chance to look around and be glad, to delight again in the goodness of God’s creation as well as the wonder of his grace and mercy. Indeed Herbert’s declaration that prayer is ‘gladness of the best’ is fully comprehensive and inclusive. Rather like the General Thanksgiving, it includes ‘our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life’, but also ‘the means of grace and the hope of glory’.

When I came to respond to this phrase in my sonnet sequence I found myself drawn to the word gladness itself, to the sheer glad sound of the word. It is striking that after ‘Manna’ which is a specifically religious word, Herbert chooses ‘gladness’, whose associations, for most of us, are as much ‘secular’ as ‘spiritual’. As for me, I can’t hear the word glad without at the same time hearing the glorious sound of The Beatles singing that word, singing ‘you know you should be glad’. So I decided to celebrate that memory in my response to Herbert’s phrase.

It so happened that shortly after I wrote this poem, I found myself recording some poetry and songs in Studio 2 in Abbey Road, as part of another project, and so I had the special pleasure of reading this ‘Abbey Road’ sonnet in a place that inspired it!

As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title

Gladness of the best

If prayer itself is gladness of the best,

Then all the best in everything is prayer.

Everything excellent, from east to west,

The best of sacred, best of secular,

The Beatles sing you know you should be glad

And that glad song is gladness of the best,

You know you’re loved, you know that can’t be bad,

Your once-lost love is found and you are blessed.

 

From that exultant sound in Abbey Road

To jubilation in the Albert Hall,

From well-honed phrases, to a well-wrought ode,

Whatsoever things are lovely, all

Brought to the source of every excellence,

That God might give them back as sacraments.

you know you should be glad!

From one voice to many; the adventures of a sonnet

with JAC at Abbey Road Studio One!

In my last post I shared with you a sonnet called O Sapientia, the first of my seven sonnets for the O Advent Antiphons, the other six of which I will be posting as we move through Advent. And in an earlier post still I told you about what a moving experience it was when Steve Bell took some of my sonnets and set them or parts of them, into the songs he sings. Now I want to tell you about another musical adventure that befell that first sonnet O Sapientia. Once again, as with Steve, this adventure came about thanks to the amazing mix of artists musicians and poets that thrives around the CS Lewis Foundation’s ‘Oxbridge’ Conferences. It happened that JAC Redford, the distinguished Californian composer and orchestrater (He was lead orchestrator for Skyfall!) was at one of these conferences and heard my O Sapientia. He took it home and the next thing I knew was that the next ‘Oxbridge’ was going to feature the world premiers of a JAC Redford setting of O Sapientia for full choir!

Attending that concert was an extraordinary experience. As a poet I can only write and read one line at a time, in a single voice. But as I write I can sense myriad possibilities, many voices, which I can only suggest by summoning the wider penumbra of connotations and the multivalent possibilities and latent energies in words themselves. I was particularly conscious of this linear constraint as I was writing O Sapientia, which moves from the opening single voiced word ‘I’ and ends with the multitudinous word ‘everything’.

Well when I heard JAC’s piece it came as a gift and a revelation! At last I was hearing aloud something of the rich layering of many voices and possibilities I could hear in my head. It was amazing and I wished there had been a recording of it. Well I have good news. JAC has arranged for Ben Parry to record it with the Peters Edition Chorale, . Here it is.

Just as with my experiences with Steve Bell, though in a completely different genre, I feel that the little seed I have sown has blossomed in surprising and beautiful ways.

(Another surprising adventure arising from this sonnet was that I got to hang out with JAC in Abbey Road Studios whilst a brilliant studio orchestra recorded the music for Skyfall!)

Now, best of all I can tell you that on Thursday 5th December at 8pm in St. Edward’s Church Cambridge you can come and hear the World Premiere of JAC’s setting of the complete sequence of my Antiphon sonnets. We hope that these will later be broadcast, next Advent on BBC Radio, but tomorrow is your opportunity to hear them in advance, and live! If you want to check out the book from which the sonnets come, click on this title: Sounding the Seasons

Here are the words of the sonnet again if you’d like to see them whilst you listen:

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,

attingens a fine usque ad finem,

fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:

veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

 

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

reaching from one end to the other mightily,

and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

 

O Sapientia

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,

O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words with which I speak,

O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,

O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,

O Memory of time, reminding me,

My Ground of Being, always grounding me,

My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,

Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,

Come to me now, disguised as everything.

From one voice to many; the adventures of a sonnet

Composer JAC Redford

In my last post I shared with you a sonnet called O Sapientia, the first of my seven sonnets for the O Advent Antiphons, the other six of which I will be posting as we move through Advent. And in an earlier post still I told you about what a moving experience it was when Steve Bell took some of my sonnets and set them or parts of them, into the songs he sings. Now I want to tell you about another musical adventure that befell that first sonnet O Sapientia. Once again, as with Steve, this adventure came about thanks to the amazing mix of artists musicians and poets that thrives around the CS Lewis Foundation’s ‘Oxbridge’ Conferences. It happened that JAC Redford, the distinguished Californian composer and orchestrater (He has just done all the orchestration for Skyfall!) was at one of these conferences and heard my O Sapientia. He took it home and the next thing I knew was that the next ‘Oxbridge’ was going to feature the world premiers of a JAC Redford setting of O Sapientia for full choir!

Attending that concert was an extraordinary experience. As a poet I can only write and read one line at a time, in a single voice. But as I write I can sense myriad possibilities, many voices, which I can only suggest by summoning the wider penumbra of connotations and the multivalent possibilities and latent energies in words themselves. I was particularly conscious of this linear constraint as I was writing O Sapientia, which moves from the opening single voiced word ‘I’ and ends with the multitudinous word ‘everything’.

Well when I heard JAC’s piece it came as a gift and a revelation! At last I was hearing aloud something of the rich layering of many voices and possibilities I could hear in my head. It was amazing and I wished there had been a recording of it. Well I have good news. JAC has arranged for Ben Parry to record it with the Peters Edition Chorale, so that we can play it at the  launch of Sounding the Seasons at St. Edward’s on Wednesday 5th December. What is more, he’s given me permission to post the recording up here so you can have a chance to hear it even if you cant make the launch. Here it is.

Just as with my experiences with Steve Bell, though in a completely different genre, I feel that the little seed I have sown has blossomed in surprising and beautiful ways.

(Another surprising adventure arising from this sonnet was that I got to hang out with JAC in Abbey Road Studios whilst the LSO recorded the music for Skyfall!)

Here are the words of the sonnet again if you’d like to see them whilst you listen:

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,

attingens a fine usque ad finem,

fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:

veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

 

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

reaching from one end to the other mightily,

and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

 

O Sapientia

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,

O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words with which I speak,

O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,

O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,

O Memory of time, reminding me,

My Ground of Being, always grounding me,

My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,

Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,

Come to me now, disguised as everything.