Hark! A trumpet-call is sounding

The original began Vox clara ecce intonat. That is how medieval singers of Lat hymns celebrated their Advent seasons in the early morning monastic service of Lauds; the words could be much older than this, but the first known printing is from the 10th c. The thought of sudden light and sound invading the dark silence must have been (and still may be) vividly powerful; Romans 13 is its NT foundation. It was Edward Caswall who provided a translation in his 1849 Lyra Catholica, which 12 years later A&M helped to establish. The firm trochaic rhythm of the English version is for once even more effective than the original, even though editors have disagreed almost from the start on the best way to begin; ‘an awful voice’ (Caswall); ‘a thrilling voice’ (Murray, 1852); ‘a herald voice’ (1906); ‘a clarion call’ (1964); ‘a trumpet call’ (Jubilate, 1982)—and then, is it sounding, calling, or something else again? Nearly half the remaining lines vary between standard hymnals; stz 2 once began, ‘Startled at …’ and ended, ‘Christ our Day Star mounts the skies’. Even such variety seems better than those books which omit the hymn altogether. When HTC was first published, this was one of 3 hymns whose revisions were discussed in the booklet Hymns in Today’s Language? (Grove 1982). Here the important guideline is re-stated, that so far as human and literary loyalties go, ‘our first duty is to the worshippers, our second to the English-language author … and only then to the original foreign-language writer …’ (p23). Except for stz 2, the text in Praise! adopts the HTC version, which in turn is based on both A&M and the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book. A great number of other paraphrases in other metres came and went in the 19th c, among them versions by Keble, Newman and Mant, and one beginning ‘Hark, hark, the voice of chanticleer’ (Vox clara?).

William H Monk’s MERTON has effectively become the natural ‘rising’ tune, since its appearance a year after Caswall’s text (1850), in The Parish Choir, and their early pairing in A&M.

b Yateley, Hants 1814, d Edgbaston (nr Birmingham), Warwicks 1878. 4th son of the Vicar of Yateley; Chigwell Grammar Sch, Essex; Marlborough Coll, Wilts; Brasenose Coll Oxford (BA 1836, MA). As a student he issued a witty academic pamphlet ‘after the fashion of Aristotle’. He was ordained (CofE) in 1838; served in the parishes of Bishop’s Norton nr Gloucester; Milverton nr Warwick; and from 1840 at Stratford-sub-Castle, nr Salisbury. But in 1846, in his early 30s, he resigned his living, and a few months later became a Roman Catholic, Jan 1847. From then on his work of translating Lat hymns, already well advanced, gathered momentum; he published nearly 200 in Lyra Catholica (etc) in 1848, and ten years later The Masque of Mary and other poems. Other books of verse and drama followed. Widowed in 1849, he moved to J H Newman’s ‘Oratory’ in Birmingham, where in 1852 he was ordained as an RC. He remained there for the rest of his life; his collected hymns and poems were published posthumously, with a biographical preface, in 1908. He became one of those Roman converts of whom Ellerton, possibly a little biased, judged that ‘it can scarcely be said that they contributed much to the strength of the church of their adoption’. Of the 250 English hymn texts in The Westminster Hymnal of 1912, more than 50 are by Caswall, mostly translations. He is often the best-represented RC author in protestant hymn-books (5 in CH2004, 12 in The BBC Hymn Book of 1951, 9 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and 13 in Common Praise 2000). As a Victorian hymntranslator he has been praised for the ‘great spirit and facility’ of his work; he ranks second only to the masterly and generally more accurate J M Neale, qv. Nos.217, 337, 347, 376, 421, 741.