The Catholic Message Board

I learned it one way as a child, and now it's different. It was always one of my favorites. Now, I don't like it.

I'm not sure who "they" are, but I haven't noticed a change in the music.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 10:05 pm I'm not sure who "they" are, but I haven't noticed a change in the music.

We currently use a song book published in Oregon...forget the name. I learned it originally in 1961. Tried finding an online version of that one, and couldn't.

There are ancient hymns that have one and only one arrangement. Just as there are hundreds of different versions of Ave Maria (Schubert's 1829 tune remains perennially popular, but it is hardly the only version that has ever been made) and the Our Father there have no doubt always been multiple versions of O Sacrament Most Holy, it's a centuries-old hymn I rather doubt that it has only been set to music one time.

OCP. Say no more.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2024 1:53 pm OCP. Say no more.

They also chose different lyrics for "Immaculate Mary", but I did learn that what I was taught as a child was Augustus Edmonds Tozer's composition:

Immaculate Mary, our hearts are on fire.
That title so wonderous
Fills all our desire.

I haven't heard that verse before.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2024 6:51 pm I haven't heard that verse before.

I know, I'm getting really old.

Immaculate Mary your praises we sing. you reign now in heaven with Jesus our king.

However, this is a song that has over 100 known verses, no one will ever sing the whole thing, nor will two renditions of it likely have the exact same lyrics.

I'm headed down a rabbit trail ... it was written by the Rev. Jeremiah Cummings and published in the Parochial Hymn Book, Boston, 1877. Google Books doesn't seem to have a copy and archive.org is down right now. It's a revision of a hymn he wrote earlier, in Songs for Catholic Schools, and I did find that here: https://books.google.com/books?id=xAc4C ... &q&f=false

I don't think he wrote all of the known verses himself. The form of that hymn, a rhyming couplet followed by repeated 'Ave Maria," is one that just makes it easy for amateur wannabe poets to make up a verse, I think most of the verses were invented long after that guy died by people who wanted to keep singing long after the song was ostensibly "over"

When I was on the Chartres pilgrimage our group sang like 17 verses of Immaculate Mary, which is one of my least-favorite hymns. Worst of all was singing the chorus French style (accent on the latter syllable of Ave)

Wikipedia says that Jean Gaignot himself wrote 120 different verses, if that is how many there were 150 years ago, there must be thousands of variations now.