Dómine Dóminus noster, quam admirábile est nomen tuum in univérsa terra!
O Lord, our God, how great is Your name throughout all the earth!
Psalm 8: 2
GT 357
GN 43
I will candidly admit that my recording this week diverges from what I’ve reconstructed, as I was singing from memory and misremembered the formula over tuum. Alas, it was my best take. I wonder how the 7th- and 8th-century cantors punished memory slips…
The word admirábile particularly struck me, so now associated with Victoria’s O magnum mysterium. A great mystery this is indeed! What does it mean for the Lord’s name to be admirable? When was the last time we regarded an earthly leader – religious or secular – as admirable? I find it difficult to imagine God in perfect attributes like these because, in our fallen world, we lack tangible examples. In the midst of greatness, admiration fuels an ardent desire to emulate someone. Yet, the Lord’s name is wordlessly pronounced throughout all of creation by their very existence…
My reconstruction relies again on the editors of BzG, as well as my own instinct. Their first recommendation, moving the quilisma note on Dómine from MI to RE1, makes sense from both a modal and intuitive perspective. This change highlights the final, RE, and uses the preceding DO as a lower neighbor (RE-DO-RE). When I tried singing both versions, the rendition with MI felt unsettled. Using MI here would set up an ascending melodic passage by highlighting FA and their half-step relationship. Instead, the leap between RE and FA justifies the use of MI in the florid, diminution-like notes that follow. The adjustment from a clivis to a single tractulus on Dóminus is self-evident through the neumes from St. Gall. RE, the final, is the logical note for the tractulus. Because the Internet Archive is down, I cannot utilize the manuscripts from the Beneventan tradition and try to better understand why the BzG editors adjusted the torculus resupinus on univérsa from RE-MI-DO-RE to RE-MI-RE-MI. Therefore, I kept it as found in the Vatican edition. In this case, the immediate double-neighbor surrounding RE encapsulates it as a structurally-important note.
- Domine Dominus noster,” Beiträge zur Gregorianik, 23: 19.
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