Exceeding glorious Father and Lord, who deckest thyself with light as with a garment; who spreadest out the heavens like a curtain: mighty creator of this and each world, of all stars and planets of their courses: We thy children render unto thee our praise and honour for the wonder of thy handiwork — for the fantastic thing about creation, and at this season most especially for the blessing of recent life and hope, visible within the face of our mother the earth as she awakens to Spring. In her awakening we see Christ triumphant over death. In her we see the rejoicing of St Mary Magdalen, first witness of the Resurrection. In her we see the fruitfulness of our most blessèd and glorious Lady the Virgin Mary — through whom thou hast given us the Light of the World, the sunshine that shineth in darkness, the Word Made Flesh. As City and Universities, in unity and concord, we have fun before thee today the birth of an earthly morning. We pray thee, use the fantastic thing about this creation to knit our hearts to the things that endure to eternity, that we may rejoice on the dawning of the infinite day of the dominion of thy Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
YESTERDAY morning, as they’ve done on May morning for greater than 500 years, the choir of Magdalen College ascended the faculty’s Great Tower at dawn to sing to a crowd of tens of 1000’s of revellers below. The tradition’s origins are thought so far from an obit (requiem mass) sung from the highest of the tower within the early sixteenth century, however the ceremony that has evolved — and that draws such huge numbers annually — mixes the sacred with the secular, the pagan with the divine, to unique effect.
Some revellers have set early alarms; many haven’t been to bed in any respect. Students stand on Magdalen Bridge alongside townsfolk, morris dancers alongside Druids, tourists, and locals, young and old together; and the mood is celebratory. Then, because the clock strikes six, the gang falls silent, and the choir begins its rendition of Hymnus Eucharisticus by my Seventeenth-century predecessor Benjamin Rogers. Five verses of a Latin hymn to a relatively unremarkable tune are followed by the May Morning Prayer, and, in a flash, the mood changes because the choir launches into Thomas Morley’s jaunty and relatively bawdy madrigal “Now is the month of Maying” and a number of playful part-songs.
Amplified through speakers, the May Morning Prayer, recited by the Dean of Divinity, wearing cassock, surplice, and stole, some 150 feet above the gang, represents the still point on this bizarre ceremony as town marks the arrival of the sun on the primary day of May. Many in the gang bow their heads, others look up into the sky, and there may be a solemnity to that moment which is deeply moving for those of us involved. I’ll always remember, on my first May Morning eight years ago, the reverent hush that fell over the gang because the Dean spoke these words.
The text, adapted over a few years by clerics at the faculty, draws on Isaiah and the Psalms (“spreadest out the heavens like a curtain” and “the wonder of thy handiwork”), on the New Testament (“the Light of the World, the sunshine that shineth in darkness, the Word Made Flesh”), and evokes the words heard in civic services in cathedrals and parish churches across the land (“As City and universities, in unity and concord”). Other images are drawn from more pagan language related to spring and summer (“the birth of an earthly morning”); and there are hints of e. e. cummings’s poem: “i thank You God for many this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirit of trees and a blue true dream of sky”.
The college’s patron saint, Mary Magdalen, and the Virgin Mary are each celebrated within the context of dawn and latest birth as “the primary witness of the resurrection” and because the “fruitful” mother of our Saviour; the closing line of the prayer draws together notions of dawn, nature, creation, and eternity; and the ultimate “Amen” acts as an upbeat to the primary madrigal — and the fun begins.
No director of any choir would decide to have their biggest gig of the 12 months on a cold rooftop at six within the morning, performing to a crowd of dazed and drunken roisterers, but, because the rising sun casts its glow over the golden stone of this ancient city, if I can remember to take a breath while concurrently keeping focused a bunch of over-excited children and students, I open myself to the wonders of creation and the fantastic thing about God’s handiwork, and to the small part that I’m playing in something each historic and really much of the moment.
I’m reminded, if only fleetingly, of the transcendence that music — made within the strangest of circumstances — can afford, and of the unique privilege that it’s to play a component in something that brings earth a little bit closer to heaven.
Mark Williams is Informator Choristarum, Organist, and Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford,
