A special tribute to December’s HYMN OF THE MONTH – Sleep, Holy Babe with a melody set to Coventry Carol was posted on the Psallite Domino blog. Please take a few moments to read about this special tribute and be sure to share it with your family, friends, and church musicians.
Psallite Domino – Sleep, Holy Babe
On December 24, 2022 at the Midnight Mass, the Choir and Orchestra of the Cincinnati Oratory, Old St. Mary’s Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, along with the twenty-one member Laudate Pueri Children’s Schola Cantorum sang Sleep, Holy Babe. The melody was composed by Jacob Schloeder (1865-1919) and arranged by Aaron Hirsch. This is one of the wonderful melodies featured in my HYMN OF THE MONTH for December. The words of this hymn were written by Father Edward Caswall (1814-1878) a most holy priest of the Birmingham Oratory in London.
Sean Connolly who is the Director / Organist of the Oratory Choir has provided a recording of this lovely hymn and photo of the choir. The Director of Laudate Pueri is Sophia Decker, and assistant director Fatima Spoor. Fatima was conducting that night. The Laudate Pueri are an integral part of the Oratory music program which Sean simultaneously assists and oversees in their integration.
Sean brought this arrangement of Schloeder’s tune from his old parish, St Mary, Help of Christians in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota where it was sung every year for nearly a century. To learn more about this beautiful hymn and Father Edward Caswall please take a few moments to read the short story HYMN OF THE MONTH – SLEEP, HOLY BABE.
Father John Wyse (1825-1898) an Irish Catholic priest wrote the text of this hymn. Little is known about this Catholic priest and hymn writer. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1825 and ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1851. He served as a parish priest at St Winefride’s, Shepshed from 1852-1853 and in 1884 was pastor of the parish of Tichborne, Hampshire. He died May 22, 1898 while at the Clifton Wood Convent in Bristol, England. The Clifton Wood Convent estate which was run by a religious order of nuns was sold around 1900.
Three other hymns have been attributed to Father Wyse including:
The earliest appearance of the hymn I’ll Sing a Hymn to Mary is found in the CROWN OF JESUS PRAYER BOOK, published in 1862 which was followed by THE CROWN HYMN BOOK published in the same year.
There was a series of THE CROWN OF JESUS publications which included the CROWN OF JESUS PRAYER BOOK, THE CROWN HYMN BOOK, THE CROWN HYMN BOOK MUSIC, and THE CROWN OF JESUS MUSIC. These were all published beginning in 1862 and continued to see publications for several years afterwards including by publisher P. J. Kenedy of New York in 1882.
The first edition of the CROWN OF JESUS MUSIC containing all four parts was published in 1862. However, as can be seen above it was available in separate parts, and this explains why we find page references in parentheses under the hymn names. The CROWN OF JESUS MUSIC editions you find on Google, or the Internet Archive only contain the first three parts and exclude the Gregorian and English Masses. Finding a copy with all four parts is exceedingly rare.
All the music for the CROWN OF JESUS collection was compiled by Henri F. Hemy (1818-1888) one of the great composers of the nineteenth century and best known for his melody for Faith of Our Fathers. Henri was born in 1818 Newcastle, England. He was the organist at St. Andrew’s Church in Newcastle and later professor of music at St. Cuthbert’s College now Ushaw College in Durham. He sang baritone, painted artwork, and composed more than seventy different works of music including his Modern Tutor for Pianoforte, 1858. He also compiled the EASY HYMNS AND SONGS, 1851.
The Melodies
Thirteen melodies have been located for this hymn and they appeared in Catholic hymnals throughout America, England, and Ireland. The most widely used melody was composed by Henri F. Hemy and can be found in the CROWN OF JESUS MUSIC, 1864. This melody appeared in more Catholic hymnals than any other including: the PAROCHIAL HYMN BOOK, (1881 and 1897) compiled by Augustus Edmonds Tozer; the WESTMINSTER HYMNAL, 1912, compiled by Sir Richard Terry; the BOOK OF HYMNS WITH TUNES, 1913 compiled by Dom Samuel Ould, O.S.B.; the CROWN HYMNAL, 1913 compiled by Father Kavanagh and James McLaughlin; the ST. BASIL’s HYMNAL, (1918 thru 1953) compiled by the Basilian Fathers; and the HOLY GHOST HYMNAL, 1954 compiled by the Holy Ghost Fathers, Dublin.h
A second melody which gained some popularity first appeared in the 1901 edition of the PSALLITE compiled by Father Alexander Roesler, S.J., (1875-1904) which list the composer’s name as Benjamin Hamma (1831-1911). Benjamin Hamma compiled the CATHOLIC YOUTH’S HYMNAL, 1891 and made other contributions to Catholic music. When Father Roesler died, Father Ludwig Bonvin, S.J., (1850-1930) became the editor, he altered various hymn texts, added some new tunes, and issued a revised collection as HOSANNA, 1910. The PSALLITE continued to be published as a separate collection until twelfth edition in 1925. The same melody appeared in THE PARISH HYMNAL, 1915 compiled by Joseph Otten (1852-1926). Joseph Otten was hunchback who came from Holland to Canada. When he was in his early twenties, he moved to St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Diocese of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where he was the organist until his death. Other hymnals include: the CATHOLIC HYMNAL, 1920 compiled by Father John G. Hacker, S.J., (1877-1946), and the PAROCHIAL HYMNAL, 1951 compiled by Father Carlo Rossini (1890-1975).
Michael Haydn (1737-1806) composed a melody, and it is from a Mass, composed for the use of Country Churches. J. Vincent Higginson (1895-1995) (aka Cyr De Brant) in his HANDBOOK FOR AMERICAN CATHOLIC HYMNALS, 1976 he indicates that in Christian Latrobe’s SELECTION OF SACRED MUSIC, 1806, Vol. 1, there are excerpts of the Mass for Country Churches. However, the melody is not present in these excerpts. Michael Haydn composed more than forty Masses for the Catholic Church.
The earliest that the melody composed by Michael Haydn appears in a Catholic hymnal for the hymn I’ll Sing a Hymn to Mary, is in the CATHOLIC HYMNS, 1898, compiled by Augustus Edmonds Tozer and published by Cary & Co., London. The CATHOLIC HYMNS collection by Tozer is a musical edition of the ST. DOMINIC’S HYMN BOOK of 1886; the melody appears later in the CATHOLIC CHURCH HYMNAL, 1905 and 1933, also compiled by Augustus Edmonds Tozer; The NOTRE DAME HYMN TUNE BOOK, 1905 compiled by Frank Birtchnell and Moir Brown and published by the Rockliff Brothers of Liverpool, England; and the STANDARD CATHOLIC HYMNAL, 1921 compiled by James A. Reilly of McLaughlin & Reilly Co., one of the most successful Catholic music publishing companies of the twentieth century.
During the first half of the twentieth century editors began changing the text of the hymn. An example of these alterations can be seen above in the PARISH HYMNAL, 1915 and in the ALVERNO HYMNAL BOOK 3, 1953 below compiled by Sister Mary Cherubim Schaeffer, O.S.F., (1886-1977). The ALVERNO HYMNAL was published in three books. Book 1 – Advent and Christmas (1948); Book 2 – Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and the major Feast Days throughout the year (1950); Book 3 – Hymns for Low Mass (1953). As can be seen in the ALVERNO HYMNAL, the hymn text was altered to favor a May hymn.
These May hymn alterations appeared in the following Catholic hymnals: the PSALLITE, 1901, compiled by Father Alexander Roesler, S.J.; the 1925 and 1932 CANTATE, compiled by John Singenberger (1848-1924); the ST. MARY’S MANUAL, 1924 compiled by Christian A. Zitell an organist for fifty years at St. Mary’s, a Jesuit Church in Toledo, Ohio; and the ST. ROSE HYMNAL, 1940 compiled by the Sisters of St. Francis of the Perpetual Adoration of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Father Joseph Mohr, S.J., (1834-1892) composed the melody.
Sir Richard R. Terry (1865-1938) composed a melody which appeared in the WESTMINSTER HYMNAL, 1912. Sir Richard was educated at Cambridge and became a convert to Catholicism in 1896. He was the choirmaster and organist at the Westminster Catholic Cathedral for over twenty years, and was knighted in 1922.
In the April 1919 edition of the CATHOLIC CHOIRMASTER, a bulletin published by the Society of St. Gregory and edited by Nicola A. Montani, sole owner of the St. Gregory Guild, there is an advertisement for a collection of TWENTY DEVOTIONAL HYMNS published by the Theodore Presser Co., This insert contains a sample of the hymns including I’ll Sing a Hymn to Mary with a melody composed by Nicola A. Montani. This collection was originally published around 1914 but was revised and the title changed to the O GLORIOSA VIRGINUM HYMNAL in 1951.
Other melodies were composed for I’ll Sing a Hymn to Mary, but they did not achieve any wide usage. They include a melody captioned Greek Air found in the CROWN OF JESUS MUSIC, 1864; a melody composed by E. F. MacGonigle an editor and composer of the late 19th century who compiled the SODALIST HYMNAL, 1887; a Marist brother known only as B.F.B., found in the AMERICAN CATHOLIC HYMNAL, 1913; a melody by DOM Anselm Schubiger, O.S.B. (1815-1888) found in the DIOCESAN HYMNAL PART 2, 1928 compiled by Cleveland Ohio Bishop Schrembs; a composition by Johann Crüger (1598-1662) found in the WESTMINSTER HYMNAL, 1939 and the ST. PAUL HYMNAL, 2015 published by the St. Paul’s Choir School of Cambridge, Massachusetts; a melody by Robert de Pearsall (1795-1856) that appeared in the MEDIATOR DEI HYMNAL, 1955; and an anonymous melody of German origin found in the NEW ST. BASIL HYMNAL, 1958.
Reflection
This is a wonderful hymn to sing and very appropriate for the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It’s also very appropriate any time we wish to honor Our Blessed Mother because when we honor her, we magnify the Lord!
When I reflect on the verses, I can see allusions to passages from the bible. In the first verse, I am reminded of the gospel account in Luke 1:27-28 and a reference to Isaiah 7:14. I’ll sing a hymn to Mary, the Mother of my God, the virgin of all virgins, of David’s royal blood. In all the verses, I see some of the most famous titles given to Our Blessed Mother including Mother of God; Virgin of all Virgins; O Lily of the valley; O Mystic Rose; Queen of all Angels, and My Mother and my Queen.
These titles are taken from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary and so when we sing this hymn, we are in a sense singing this beautiful Litany. I also see an allusion to Luke 1:46-55 in the phrase, O teach me Holy Mary, a loving song to frame. When I reflect on the last phrase of the verse, I’ll love and bless thy name, I am reminded again of the Magnificat in Luke’s gospel, 1:48, For he has looked upon his servant in her lowliness; all ages to come shall call me blessed.
Anyone who meditates on these verses will see something different or nothing at all.
What can you see?
Below is a selection of the melodies described above. These are computer generated sound files. The tempo is approximate but should provide the listener a good sense of what the hymn sounds like. All the hymns are in the public domain.
The Devotional Hymns Project, produced by Peter Meggison, includes a recording of this hymn used with the permission of the Schola Cantorum of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London.
Father Edward Caswall a Roman Catholic priest wrote the text of this hymn. The earliest occurrence of the hymn that could be located is in the Catholic journal THE RAMBLER published in 1850, and it is captioned To the Infant Jesus Asleep.
The hymn also appeared in a literary review column on page 2 of the June 5, 1858 edition of THE PILOT, a Boston and New York newspaper. This was a review of the recently published MASQUE OF MARY, AND OTHER POEMS by Father Edward Caswall. This review was originally published in the London Weekly Register.
Edward was a convert to Catholicism and was received into the Catholic Church on January 18, 1847, by Cardinal Charles Acton (1803-1847) at the Venerable English College in Rome. In attendance was Father John Henry Newman, Father Thomas Grant the Rector of the College, along with several others who had come with Edward that day. At this time Edward was married to Louisa Mary Stuart Walker who was also received into the Church of Rome a week later on January 25, 1847.
During the summer of 1849, England was in the grips of a vicious cholera epidemic which persisted even into the autumn season. Edward and Louisa had gone to stay at Torquay, a sea side resort. On September 14, early in the morning, Edward left for Mass and on his return from church he found Louisa and the landlady of the lodge where they were staying deathly ill with the cholera and by 11 o’clock that night Louisa Caswall was dead.
Edward was devastated and grief stricken as one could only imagine. He immediately sent word to Father Newman, and they arranged that Louisa’s Requiem Mass and burial would take place at St. Wilfrid’s in Cotton, Staffordshire. The pastor of St. Wilfrid’s was Father Frederick William Faber, a fellow convert and student at Oxford University. It is unclear if Edward or Father Faber knew each other before this time but certainly, they became acquainted at this Mass. Father Newman celebrated the Mass and Father Henry Formby a longtime friend whom Edward knew from their days at Brasenose College, Oxford, a fellow convert, and priest at the Oratory, sang the Dies Irae.
In the following year around February 1850, the Birmingham Oratory was established at its present address on Hagley Road in Edgbaston. It is also at this time that Edward was admitted as a novice to the Oratory and three days later he received the tonsure and was admitted to Minor Orders. Then on December 21, 1850 the anniversary of his wedding to Louisa, he was ordained as a subdeacon and a year later almost to the day on December 20, 1851 he was ordained a deacon. By April of 1852, the building in Edgbaston had been completed and all the Oratorians took up residence at the new location. On September 18, 1852, Deacon Edward Caswall along with Deacon Henry Bittleston were ordained as Catholic priest.
Father Edward Caswall – Courtesy of the Birmingham Oratory
Throughout his life, Father Caswall was a prolific writer. During his time at Brasenose College, a constituent college of Oxford University he published a number of literary works including The Oxonian – a series of papers on University life written with a humorist point of view. This was followed by his Pluck Examination Papers which he later published in a book The Art of Pluck – the caricature of these works was to enlighten the undergraduate on how to fail his examinations and in the lingo of the University to get plucked. The ability to write in satire and at the same time convey a moral point was a gift that Father Caswall possessed. These and several other publications where enormously successful and provided him a steady income which he would benefit from during his college days and in the future.
During his conversion journey to Rome, Father Caswall kept a journal that has remained unpublished, and its existence known only to a handful of people. He was a man of meticulous detail and observation and his eyewitness accounts of Roman Catholicism during his visit to Ireland in the summer of 1846 proved to be a turning point in his life.
On one occasion in 1846, on a summer evening, he witnessed a small group of poor worshipers praying in a Catholic chapel in Ireland. He observed that one person said the Lord’s Prayer as far as, as it is in heaven, and the others began at, give us this day our daily bread. Then the same person began another prayer, and the others began Holy Mary, and everything was in English. It was the first time he had heard any devotion to Our Blessed Mother and before the evening was over, he was kneeling down with them. Any Anglican preconceptions of idolatry left him, and he was consumed with the expression of love and humility of these poor men and women. From that point onward, he became devoted to the Rosary.
Almost two years after he joined the Catholic Church, Father Caswall published his first collection of hymns in 1849, the LYRA CATHOLICA, containing translations of all Breviary and Missal hymns of the Roman Breviary. Father Caswall was always working for the education of the poor and especially the children even during his curacy at Stratford-sub-Castle near Salisbury. A question that plagued him during his conversion journey was how the Latin liturgy could have any meaning for the average Catholic let alone the poor and uneducated.
During the summer of 1846 while in Ireland he attended a Requiem Mass for Pope Gregory XVI who had recently died. He was concerned and frustrated because he couldn’t follow the liturgy. How is it that the poor and uneducated understand the Latin liturgy and an Oxford graduate in the classics is lost? This was the underlying reason for his translations of the Roman Breviary – to publish in the English language for anyone who could read or to pray in private the Divine Office.
Father Caswall remained at the Birmingham Oratory until his death on January 2, 1878. Father Edward Caswall was named, along with Father Joseph Gordon and Father Ambrose St John, as one of the three Oratorians whom Newman deemed his greatest friends and most loyal and devoted laborer’s in St Philip’s vineyard.
There is so much more that could be written about Father Caswall but that is beyond the scope of this short write-up. His contributions to Catholic hymnody include such favorites as: At The Cross Her Station Keeping; Come Holy Ghost Creator Blest; Jesus the very thought of Thee; Joseph Our Certain Hope in Life; Joseph Pure Spouse; Sing My Tongue the Savior’s Glory; Ye Sons and Daughters of the Lord; Hark an Awful Voice is Sounding; Dear Maker of the Starry Skies; O Jesus Christ Remember; O Saving Victim Opening Wide; The Dawn Was Purpling O’re the Sky; See Amid the Winter Snow; When Morning Guilds the Skies; What a Sea of Tears and Sorrows; This is the Image of Our Queen; and many more hymns. He published several hymn books including LYRA CATHOLICA, 1849; the MASQUE OF MARY AND OTHER POEMS, 1858; and HYMNS AND POEMS, 1873.
Some of the details above were used with permission and were taken from EDWARD CASWALL: NEWMAN’S BROTHER AND FRIEND written by Nancy Marie de Flon and published by Gracewing in 2005. Nancy’s book is a wonderful biography of Father Caswall’s life and journey to Catholicism. An earlier biography of Edward Caswall was written by Edward Bellasis (1800-1873) an English lawyer and convert to Catholicism in the new edition of HYMNS AND POEMS published in 1908.
The Melodies
Thirteen melodies have been located for this hymn but only two were widely used. The other melodies appeared only once or twice in Catholic hymnals and quickly faded away. Four of these melodies are featured in this write-up.
The earliest and the most widely used melody first appeared in the Catholic hymnal EASY HYMNS AND SONGS FOR CATHOLIC SCHOOLS, 1851 compiled by Henri F. Hemy (1818-1888). It is a Wiegenlied, literally cradle song or lullaby dated 1781 from Wilhelm Kothe’s GESANGBUCH FÜR KATHOLISCHE SCHULEN, 1882. The German text are not the words for the hymn Sleep, Holy Babe.
This melody is found in these Catholic hymnals: WESTMINSTER HYMNAL, 1912 and 1939; CROWN HYMNAL, 1913; ST. GREGORY’S HYMNAL, 1920 and 1947; ST. BASIL’S HYMNAL, 1925; THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL HYMNAL, 1930; LAUDATE CHOIR MANUAL, 1942; SING TO THE LORD, 1944; PIUS X HYMNAL, 1953; MEDIATOR DIE HYMNAL, 1955; the NEW ST. BASIL HYMNAL, 1958; the CATHOLIC HYMNAL, 1966; and the ADOREMUS HYMNAL, 2011.
This melody is often attributed to Louise Reichardt who died in 1826. She is not the composer but instead is the daughter of Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) who is the composer of the hymn. Both father and daughter along with her mother Juliane were composers.
The second melody appeared in the HOLY FAMILY HYMNS, 1860 published by Richardson and Son in London, Dublin, and Derby. The melody is attributed to Father Louis Lambillotte, S.J., (1796-1855) a French Jesuit Catholic priest. This melody also appeared in the 1883 and 1897 PAROCHIAL HYMN BOOK’s compiled by Father Antoine Police, S.M., and published in London, New York, and Dublin. It also appeared in the ST. BASIL’S HYMNAL from 1918 through 1953. The ST. BASIL’S HYMNAL was the most widely used Catholic hymnal and was published throughout the United States and Canada. Father Lambillotte is well known for the melodies of Come Holy Ghost Creator Blest; On This Day, O Beautiful Mother, and ‘Tis the Month of Our Mother.
The third melody is attributed to the Birmingham Oratory and can be found in THE BOOK OF HYMNS WITH TUNES, 1913 compiled by Dom Samuel Gregory Ould, O.S.B. (1864-1939). He was an organist, composer, and hymnologist. The majority of the hymn translations in this collection belong to Father Caswall.
John B. Dykes (1823-1876) composed the fourth melody, and it appeared in A DAILY HYMN BOOK, 1932 and 1948. His melody is also found in a number of Christmas carol collections starting around the 1870s. John Dykes was Cambridge educated and was ordained in the Church of England in 1847.
Another melody appeared in the in the 1905 and 1933 editions of the CATHOLIC CHURCH HYMNAL compiled by Augustus E. Tozer (1857-1910), this melody was composed by Jacob H. Schloeder (1865-1919). Jacob was a composer of church music and the organist for the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Manhattan for twenty-seven years. This particular melody was used at St Mary, Help of Christians in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota where it was sung every year for nearly a century. It was arranged by Aaron Hirsch.
The other melodies mentioned earlier were composed by the following:
Reflection
For me, the melody attributed by Father Louis Lambillotte is the humblest and most moving of all the melodies. At St. Mary’s when I sang in the choir (1977-2005) this hymn was always part of our Christmas program and often times would be sung during Communion. We used the arrangement from the 1918 ST. BASIL’S HYMNAL.
When I meditate on the verses, I can see certain allusions to verses from the bible, Upon Thy mother’s breast, the Great Lord of earth, sea, and sky. Psalm 22:9-10, and Luke 11:27. I am reminded of the Annunciation and the Word made flesh in the phrase, Before the Incarnate King of kings, Luke 1: 26-38.
I am drawn into the joy of that Holy night in the third verse, While I with Mary gaze, In joy upon that face awhile, and with somber words, the foreshadowing of Good Friday unfolds, Ah, take thy brief repose, Too quickly will Thy slumber break, And Thou to lengthened pains awake, that death alone shall close.
Everyone who meditates on the verses may find other biblical references, what bible verses can you find?
Below is a selection of the four melodies described above which have been composed for the hymn. One of the recordings is from St. Mary’s Choir – Christmas Eve Midnight Mass from 1985. Nearly forty years have passed and my friends in the choir still sound wonderful! The others are computer generated sound files. The tempo is approximate but should provide the listener a good sense of what the hymn sounds like.
A special thank you to Peter Meggison producer of the Devotional Hymns Project for allowing me to link to new recordings by the choristers of St. Peter’s Church in Columbia, South Carolina and the beautiful recording of Sleep, Holy Babe.
Also, On December 24, 2022 at the Midnight Mass, the Choir and Orchestra of the Cincinnati Oratory, Old St. Mary’s Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, along with the twenty-one member Laudate Pueri Children’s Schola Cantorum sang Sleep, Holy Babe. A special thank you to Sean Connolly who is the Director / Organist of the Oratory Choir who provided a recording of this lovely hymn. Please take a moment to read more about Choir and Orchestra of the Cincinnati Oratory.