O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

In spite of claims the Latin metrical hymn dates from the 11th or 12th century, it appears for the first time in the seventh edition of Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum (Cologne, 1710). This hymnal was a major force in the history of German church music: first assembled by Jesuit hymnographer Johannes Heringsdorf in 1610 and receiving numerous revised editions through 1868, it achieved enormous impact due to its use in Jesuit schools.[5]

Each stanza of the hymn consists of a four-line verse (in 88.88 meter with an aabb rhyme scheme), paraphrasing one of the O antiphons. There is also a new two-line refrain (again in 88 meter): "Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel / nascetur pro te, Israel", i.e., "Rejoice, Rejoice! Emmanuel will be born for you, O Israel". There are only five verses: two of the antiphons are omitted and the order of the remaining verses differs from that of the O Antiphons, most notably the last antiphon ("O Emmanuel") becomes the first verse of the hymn and gives the hymn its title of “Veni, veni, Emmanuel”:

Text in Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus (1844)

1. Veni, veni Emmanuel!
Captivum solve Israel!
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio. [7th antiphon]

Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

2. Veni o Jesse virgula!
Ex hostis tuos ungula,
De specu tuos tartari
Educ, et antro barathri. [3rd antiphon]

3. Veni, veni o Oriens!
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras. [5th antiphon]

4. Veni clavis Davidica!
Regna reclude coelica,
Fac iter Tutum superum,
Et claude vias Inferum. [4th antiphon]

5. Veni, veni Adonai!
Qui populo in Sinai
Legem dedisti vertice,
In maiestate gloriae. [2nd antiphon]

In 1844, the 1710 text was included in the second volume of Thesaurus Hymnologicus, a monumental collection by the German hymnologist Hermann Adalbert Daniel, thus ensuring a continued life for the Latin text even as the Psalteriolum came to the end of its long history in print.

It was from Thesaurus Hymnologicus that John Mason Neale would come to know the hymn. Neale would both publish the Latin version of the hymn in Britain and translate the first (and still most important) English versions.[6]

The 1710 text was published in Joseph Hermann Mohr's Cantiones Sacrae of 1878, with two additional verses of unknown authorship paraphrasing the two “missing” O Antiphons. The order of verses now followed that of the antiphons (beginning with “Sapientia” and ending with “Emmanuel”), and accordingly the hymn's title in this hymnal was “Veni, O Sapientia”. The refrain had undergone a slight change and was now "Gaude, gaude, O Israel. Mox veniet Emmanuel”, i.e. “Rejoice, rejoice, o Israel. Soon shall come Emmanuel”.[7]

1. Veni, O Sapientia,
Quae hic disponis omnia,
Veni, viam prudentiae
Ut doceas et gloriae.

Gaude, gaude, o Israel.
Mox veniet Emmanuel.

2. Veni, veni Adonai ...

3. Veni, o Jesse virgula ...

4. Veni, clavis Davidica ...

5. Veni, veni, o Oriens ...

6. Veni, Veni, Rex Gentium,
Veni, Redemptor omnium,
Ut salves tuos famulos
Peccati sibi conscios.

7. Veni, veni, Emmanuel ...

Additional verses trans. H. S. Coffin (1916)

The familiar tune called "Veni Emmanuel" was first linked with this hymn in 1851, when Thomas Helmore published it in the Hymnal Noted, paired with an early revision of Neale's English translation of the text. The volume listed the tune as being "From a French Missal in the National Library, Lisbon."[13] However, Helmore provided no means by which to verify his source, leading to long-lasting doubts about its attribution. There was even speculation that Helmore might have composed the melody himself.

The mystery was settled in 1966 by British musicologist Mary Berry (also an Augustinian canoness and noted choral conductor), who discovered a 15th-century manuscript containing the melody in the National Library of France.[14] The manuscript consists of processional chants for burials. The melody used by Helmore is found here with the text "Bone Jesu dulcis cunctis" [Goodbye sweet Jesus to all]; it is part of a series of two-part tropes to the responsory Libera me.

As Berry (writing under her name in religion, Mother Thomas More) points out in her article on the discovery, "Whether this particular manuscript was the actual source to which [Helmore] referred we cannot tell at present." (Recall that Hymnal Noted referred to Lisbon, not Paris, and to a missal, not a processional.) Berry raised the possibility that there might exist "an even earlier version of" the melody.[15] However, there is no evidence to suggest that this tune was connected with this hymn before Helmore's hymnal; thus, the two would have first come together in English. Nonetheless, because of the nature of metrical hymns, it is perfectly possible to pair this tune with the Latin text; versions doing so exist by Zoltán Kodály,[16] Philip Lawson[17] and Jan Åke Hillerud,[18] among others.

In the German language, Das katholische Gesangbuch der Schweiz ("The Catholic Hymnal of Switzerland") and Gesangbuch der Evangelisch-reformierten Kirchen der deutschsprachigen Schweiz ("The Hymnal of the Evangelical-Reformed Churches of German-speaking Switzerland"), both published in 1998, adapt a version of the text by Henry Bone that usually lacks a refrain to use it with this melody.[19]

Source[20]

The pairing of the hymn text with the Veni Emmanuel tune was proved an extremely significant combination. The hymn text was embraced both out of a Romantic interest in poetic beauty and medieval exoticism and out of a concern for matching hymns to liturgical seasons and functions rooted in the Oxford Movement in the Church of England. The Hymnal Noted, in which the words and tune were first combined, represented the "extreme point" of these forces. This hymnal "consisted entirely of versions of Latin hymns, designed for use as Office hymns within the Anglican Church despite the fact that Office hymns had no part in the authorized liturgy. The music was drawn chiefly from plainchant", as was the case with the Veni Emmanuel tune for "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", the combination of which has been cited as an exemplar of this new style of hymnody.[21]

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" was thus ideally situated to benefit from the cultural forces that would bring about Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861. This new hymnal was a product of the same ideological forces that paired it with the Veni Emmanuel tune, ensuring its inclusion, but was also designed to achieve commercial success beyond any one party of churchmanship, incorporating high-quality hymns of all ideological approaches.[21]

The volume succeeded wildly; by 1895, Hymns Ancient and Modern was being used in three quarters of English churches. The book "probably did more than anything else to spread the ideas of the Oxford Movement" (which include the aesthetics of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel") "so widely that many of them became imperceptibly a part of the tradition of the Church as a whole." Its musical qualities in particular "became an influence far beyond the boundaries of the Church of England." It is very reflective of these cultural forces that the form of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" in Hymns Ancient and Modern remains predominant in the English-speaking world.[21] (This predominance encompasses not just the Veni Emmanuel tune, but also the revised English translation that included, for example, the title used in this article – see the section English versions below.)

While the "Veni Emmanuel" tune predominates in the English-speaking world, several others have been closely associated with the hymn.

In the United States, some Lutheran hymnals use the tune "St. Petersburg" by Dmitry Bortniansky for "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."[22] A Moravian hymnal from the US gives a tune attributed to Charles Gounod[23]

Alternative tunes are particularly common in the German-speaking world, where the text of the hymn originated, especially as the hymn was in use there for many years before Helmore's connection of it to the "Veni Emmanuel" tune became known.

Among several German paraphrases of the hymn, one is attributed to Christoph Bernhard Verspoell – one of the earliest and most influential to arise around the late-18th/early-19th century. It is associated with its own distinctive tune, which has enjoyed exceptionally long-lasting popularity in the Diocese of Münster.[24]

A more faithful German translation by Heinrich Bone became the vehicle for a tune from JBC Schmidts' Sammlung von Kirchengesängen für katholische Gymnasien (Düsseldorf 1836), which remains popular in German diocesan song-books and regional editions of the common hymnal Gotteslob. This melody was carried across the Atlantic by Johann Baptist Singenberger, where it remains in use through the present in some Catholic communities in the United States.

The Archdiocese of Cologne's supplement to Gotteslob (#829) includes a tune by CF Ackens (Aachen, 1841) with the Bone translation. A version by Bone without a refrain is commonly connected with a tune from the Andernacher Gesangbuch (Cologne, 1608), but it can also be used with the melody of the medieval Latin hymn Conditor alme siderum, further demonstrating the flexibility of metrical hymnody.