This Week’s Music:
“Ave Verum Corpus”
by Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
This Sunday, the choir will be led by choir member and music educator Kathy Hopkins, and the organ will be played by Sue Crocker, a retired church musician who some of you may remember from her tenure at FPC years ago. With such terrific musicians, I wanted to leave them with a personal favorite of mine – Elgar’s “Ave Verum Corpus.” Though Mozart’s rendition of the same text is more popular (you might remember Owen Beal sang it as a solo in the early Fall), Elgar’s setting has always enchanted me. Interestingly, both Elgar and Mozart omit a portion of the text – Mozart omits the last 3 lines, and Elgar omits the final clause which translates to “Have mercy on me. Amen.” In so doing, he ends the piece with an incomplete clause, “O Jesus, son of Mary…” perhaps hinting that we ourselves should fill in personal supplications to Christ…or perhaps because the work was originally set to the “Pie Jesu” and that’s just how the syllables worked out. Regardless of intention, I invite you to savor that holy mix of completeness and incompleteness when this music ends, and decide for yourself whether there is more to be said.
– Andy Eaton