Lenten Musical Meditation: 'Sub Tuum Praesidium'

Friends, I recently wrote this setting of the ancient Christian hymn, Sub Tuum Praesidium, and though it cannot be performed live, along with my brilliant sister Joy Clarkson and her beautiful voice, we’ve sung and recorded a studio version of it, and I’m thrilled to share it with all with you today. 

The Sub Tuum Praesidium is one of the oldest known still-existing hymns from the early church, likely sung by Christians during intense times of persecution. The first Christians were all too well aware of the peril their faith represented in the ancient Roman world, and were constantly under threat of complete annihilation. In many ways, that fragile faith was kept alive by a profound awareness of the world beyond our own, the awareness that, as Paul says in Romans, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” 

Some settings of this vibrant text have focused on the comforting aspects of the words, the sense of reassurance and hope. And yet the word “praesidium,” translated generally as “protection,” has a sense of military might. With my own setting, I wanted to capture the intensity of a glorious and beautiful heavenly reality that has not come simply to comfort and succour us, but to fight on our behalf, to enter into the fray and cast away the darkness. 

As you listen to the piece, I hope that in our own time of uncertainty and fear, you will attune your ears to the tensions in the harmony, and experience within them the ringing truth that in our struggles, we are not alone, but that we are accompanied, by the one who has entered into our suffering, and who, with the whole host of Heaven, and all who have gone before us, fights on our behalf. 

Latin:
Sub tuum praesidium
confugimus,
Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias
in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis
libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta

English:
We fly to Thy protection,
O Holy Mother of God;
Do not despise our petitions
in our necessities,
but deliver us always
from all dangers,
O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. Amen.