Meménto verbi tui servo tuo, Dómine in quo mihi spem dedísti: Haec me consoláta est in humilitáte mea.
Remember Your word to Your servant, O Lord, in which You have made me hope. This is my consolation in my humiliation.
Psalm 118: 49-50.
Remember. That word conjures up so many connotations – the memories we relish, the memories we shun. Joy. Shame. Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord calls out to the Israelites – to each of us – to bear in mind His marvelous deeds and mercy. How easily we forget His constancy, especially when shame weighs us down. Curt Thompson’s The Soul of Shame taught me just how pervasively shame rears its ugly head in our mundane lives – along with its antidote. By recalling over and over again what is truest about ourselves and therefore being deeply known creates new neural pathways where shame had once dominated. For Christians, our identities are rooted in the Word of God, prefigured in these psalm verses. We hope in Christ, our “comfort in sorrow”, as that last line is usually translated.
My melodic rendition deviates twice from the Vatican edition. St. Gall gives a pes with a preceding equaliter over tui, while Laon only marks a virga. Ultimately, I decided to adopt St. Gall, since the two-note interplay between SOL and LA features prominently in the first part of the phrase. A slight delay before LA also creates a bit of tension before the dominant note. I’m sure the editors of the Graduale Novum consulted other ancient manuscripts to verify their edit; I’ll need to double-check that when I get the relevant article.
I also changed the second note of the clivis on servo from RE to MI. This clivis is adorned with a celeriter and an inferius. The clivis immediately preceding this one (tui) also bears the same added letters and descends by a major third. Both clivi before these give the added letters celeriter and sursum and descend only by major second. In these instances, sursum indicates descent by the smallest possible interval, a major second in mode IV. Contextually then, inferius is in reference to sursum; it is lower than the major second, rather than a large descent. Furthermore, a half-step is created between MI and FA (servo tuo), highlighting another structurally-important note in mode IV.
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