Version 1 :
Chaumonot Composers Group: This smooth version was sent to us, and I believe it’s the very best one. Their project is being lead by a former student of mine—and she seems to have been heavily influenced by the version in the Nova órgani harmónia ad graduále juxta editiónem vaticánam in her accompaniment. Like all the English translations included in this blog article, this particular English translation has been approved for liturgical use in the United States of America:
* PDF Download • “Veni Sancte Spiritus” (Sequence)
—Posted with permission from the Chaumonot Composers Group.
* PDF Download • “Veni Sancte Spiritus” (in English)
—PENTECOST SEQUENCE • English Translation with musical notes for singers.
* PDF Download • ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT (in English)
—PENTECOST SEQUENCE • Organ accompaniment (English).
Version 2 :
Father Green: Father Andrew Green (d. 1950) assisted Father Herman Koch with a 1942 collection called “Laudate Hymnal.” Dr. Horst Buchholz—Director of Sacred Music at the Cathedral and the Archdiocese of St. Louis—has expressed admiration for this hymnal, which uses many German melodies. Father Andrew was famous as a poet, musician, composer, author and teacher. He was part of St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison, Kansas.
When sung in Latin, you’ll need the following musical score for your singers:
* PDF Download • “Veni Sancte Spiritus” (in Latin)
—PENTECOST SEQUENCE (Latin) • With English Translation by Father Adrian Fortescue.
Version 3 :
Dom Gregory Murray: Dom Andrew Gregory Murray (d. 1992) was a marvelous organist and composer who lived in England. Based on his many published attacks against Solesmes Abbey, he seems to have had quite an unpleasant personality. But his organ compositions are beautiful. Dom Gregory studied with Sir Richard Runciman Terry as a child, and later served as organist for Downside Abbey.
Version 4 :
Father Jones: Dr Percy Jones (d. 1992) was an Australian Catholic priest and musician who died the same year as Dom Gregory Murray. Father Jones compiled and edited The Australian Hymnal (1941) and The Hymnal of Blessed Pius X (1952). I believe the chord he chose for “tus” of et emítte caélitus sounds just awful—was he smoking crack when he composed that?
Version 5 :
Canon Van Nuffel: Father Jules Jozef Paul Maria Van Nuffel (d. 1953) was a Belgian priest, composer, and musicologist. Although he showed early talent, serving as school organist in 1898–1899, he had little formal training in music. His one attempt at formal study at the Ecole de Musique Religieuse (later the LEMMENSINSTITUUT) lasted only three months before ending in a dispute with his teacher Edgar Tinel—so he was essentially self-taught. His crowning achievement was the creation of the Nova Organi Harmonia. This was an eight-volume collection of Gregorian accompaniments, composed by Canon Van Nuffel, along with Flor Peeters, Monsignor Jules Vyverman, Marinus de Jong, and other professors at the Lemmens Institute. Indeed, the legendary Flor Peeters was a student of Van Nuffel.
Version 6 :
Father Weber: Father Samuel F. Weber is a professed monk and priest of Saint Meinrad Archabbey, Indiana. In 2014, Father Weber published Hymnal for the Hours, which was reviewed by Daniel Craig. He has served as a seminary professor for forty-three years. Father Weber taught Jeff Ostrowski’s brother, who is a priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas.
Version 7 :
Dr. Marier: In 1934, Dr. Theodore Marier (d. 2001) began fifty-two years of musical service at The Church of St. Paul (Harvard Square) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1963, alongside Monsignor Augustine F. Hickey, he founded a choir school associated with the parish—“St. Paul’s Choir School”—and directed it until his retirement in 1986. During the 1950s, Marier was a faculty member of the Pius X School of Liturgical Music at Manhattanville College. In 1966, Marier was elected president of the Church Music Association of America. Dr. Marier produced a hymnal in the 1970s called “Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Canticles” which has been reviewed by Daniel Craig.
Version 8 :
Father Carlo Rossini: Father Carlo Rossini (d. 1975) had a long career at Saint Paul’s Cathedral (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Father Rossini composed 20 Masses, including his popular “Adeste fideles” Christmas Mass and his “Missa Solemnis,” written for his Golden Jubilee on 19 May 1963. Rossini was born in Europe; specifically, the ancient Roman city of Osimo, Italy, on March 3, 1890. After priestly ordination in 1913, his superiors sent him to study at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome. In 1930—three years after Rossini became organist and choirmaster at Saint Paul’s Cathedral—Bishop Hugh Boyle named him chairman of the Diocesan Music Commission. Dear to Rossini’s heart was the establishment of the Instituto San Carlo, which could be thought of as “an Italian Boys Town.” The money he earned from his publications went into the construction and continuation of that institution, which was located in his birthplace of Osimo.
Version 9 :
Mr. Julius Bas: Julius Bas was engaged by Solesmes Abbey to compose accompaniments for the entire Editio Vaticana (“Vatican Edition”). He served as editor of the famous Rassegna Gregoriana. Bas was born in Venice on 21 April 1874 and died in 1929. He studied composition and counterpoint studies with Josef Rheinberger. In 1901, on the recommendation of his friend Don Lorenzo Perosi, Julius Bas was appointed 2nd conductor-organist of the choir of San Marco in Venice. From 1908 to 1915, Bas taught Gregorian chant, theory, and music history at the Milan conservatory. “Giulio” is the Italian form of Bas’ name. “Julius” is the Latin (and English) equivalent. The name Giulio derives from the Latin IULIUS.
Version 10 :
Dr. Peter Wagner: Dr. Peter Wagner (d. 1931) was a student of Father Michael Hermesdorff at Trier. If memory servers, Wagner’s dissertation was on the secular music of Palestrina. He founded a special school for the study of Gregorian chant at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). His students included: Joseph Gogniat, Father Charles Dreisoerner, and Dr. Karl Gustav Fellerer.
Version 11 :
Father Franz Xaver Mathias: Dr. Mathias (d. 1939) was an Alsatian organist and composer who studied in Germany with Hugo Riemann. He was organist at the Strasbourg Cathedral (1898–1908). In 1913, Father Mathias founded “The Saint Leo Institute for Sacred Music.”
* PDF Download • VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS (Low Key, Version 11)
* PDF Download • VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS (High Key, Version 12)
Version 13 :
Max Springer: Max Springer (d. 1954) was a German organist, composer, and music educator who studied with Antonín Dvořák in Prague. The Vienna Music Academy is where Springer spent the major part of his career: teaching composition there from around 1910, becoming a full professor in 1923, and serving as its director from 1926. In 1910 he published Organum comitans ad graduale parvum quod juxta Editionem Vaticanam. His organ accompaniments are quite bizarre, but supposedly represent what was done at the famous Beuron Archabbey:
Version 14 :
Dom Desroquettes: Dom Jean-Hébert Desroquettes (d. 1972) was organist at Solesmes Abbey (“Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes”). Here is something rather peculiar: Dom Desrocquettes died the same year as Henri Potiron died, and was born the same year as Achille P. Bragers was born.
Version 15 :
Achille P. Bragers: Achille P. Bragers studied at the Lemmens Institute (Belgium). He later taught at the Pius the Tenth School of Liturgical Music at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in New York.
* PDF Download • VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS (Low Key, Version 15)
* PDF Download • VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS (High Key, Version 16)
Version 17 :
Henri Potiron: Henri Potiron was choirmaster of Sacred Heart Basilica (Paris) and taught at the Gregorian Institute. He was friends with Dom Desrocquettes. I must say, the version of “Veni Sancte Spiritus” by Potiron is pretty awful.
Version 18 :
Dr. Eugène Lapierre: Canadian organist Dr. Lapierre (d. 1970) was the one who gave Roger Wagner his doctorate. In Paris, Lapierre studied with Vincent d’Indy (d. 1931), Marcel Dupré (d. 1971), Henri Potiron (d. 1972), and Dom Jean Hébert Desrocquettes (d. 1974). Of Potiron and Desrocquettes, Lapierre said: “These two eminent Gregorianists were my professors in Paris, and they remain my guides.”
Version 19 :
Monsignor Franz Nekes: Born in 1844, Nekes (as a young child) discovered the differing tones of his father’s finished pots and arranged them into a scale to play on with a stick. In October of 1887, he was summoned to become the inspector and lecturer in counterpoint at the GREGORIUSHAUS, Aachen’s church music school. In 1911, Nekes was installed as a canon at Aachen Cathedral, the great church founded by Charlemagne. He was sometimes called The German Palestrina.
Version 20 :
Münster Hymnal (1953): The diocese of Münster was famous for its bishop, called “the lion of Münster” because he strongly and publicly opposed Adolf Hitler. This bishop was made a cardinal by Pope Pius XII and beatified by Pope Benedict XVI. Because he was a nobleman, he had an insane amount of names. His name was: Very Rev’d Clemens Augustinus Emmanuel Joseph Pius Anthonius Hubertus Marie Graf von Galen. This particular edition of the Münster Hymnal was published in 1953.
Version 21 :
Christ The King Hymnal (1954): Monsignor Aloysius Joseph Knauff was born on 14 November 1893 in Germany. He served in the German army during WWI, afterward entering the seminary. Ordained in Switzerland in 1925, he came to Canada the following year. When the Diocese of Regina was split to create the Diocese of Gravelbourg, his ministry continued in the new diocese—serving at Verwood, Mazenod, and lastly Meyronne, before returning to Shaunavon in 1952 following the death of Msgr. Reibel. Monsignor Knauff died on 13 June 1959, just a few years after he published the Christ The King Hymnal. This arrangement does not strictly replicate the Gregorian chant version. It’s more of a ‘paraphrase’ of the chant.
Four (4) More:
Here is another English translation of Pentecost Sequence approved for liturgical use in the United States by the authority of the [Roman Catholic] Bishops’ Commission on the Liturgical Apostolate.
And here is an English translation (musical score) whose text was approved for liturgical use by the United States Conference of Catholic bishops.
The English version found in the O’Fallon Propers printed here on two pages also has ecclesiastical approval for liturgical use.
Also, here’s a harmonization from 1955 found in a Roman Catholic hymnal printed in Mainz. The Germans seem to have added vernacular before anybody else. However, that harmonization does not seem particularly excellent to my ears…
Here’s a harmonization found in a 1952 Roman Catholic Hymnal by Monsignor Johannes Overath:
Bonus Harmonization :
Below shows the “Veni Sancte Spíritus” organ accompaniment found in the 1920 hymnal (by Father John Hacker, a Jesuit priest) printed in Buffalo, New York:
It would be difficult to imagine more schmaltzy chords than what Father Hacker placed on “nihil” and “saucium”—but for some reason, I kind of enjoy them…
The following English translation was given Roman Catholic approval for liturgical use in 1981:
Holy Spirit, Lord of light,
From the clear celestial height
Thy pure beaming radiance give.
Come, thou Father of the poor,
Come with treasures which endure;
Come, thou light of all that live!
Light immortal, light divine,
Visit thou these hearts of thine,
And our inmost being fill:
If thou take thy grace away,
Nothing pure in man will stay;
All his good is turned to ill.
Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
On our dryness pour thy dew;
Wash the stains of guilt away:
Thou, of all consolers best,
Thou, the soul’s delightful guest,
Dost refreshing peace bestow;
Thou in toil art comfort sweet;
Pleasant coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.
Bend the stubborn heart and will;
Melt the frozen, warm the chill;
Guide the steps that go astray.
Thou, on us who evermore
Thee confess and thee adore,
With thy sevenfold gifts descend:
Give us comfort when we die;
Give us life with thee on high;
Give us joys that never end.
* For scholarly purposes, you may compare the 1981 version by Abbe Ferdinand Portier. In my humble opinion, his harmonization is very poorly done. You can also download this organ accompaniment by Mr. Winfred Douglas (a member of the Episcopal Church) which uses an English translation created by Father Edward Caswall, a Roman Catholic priest.
