Adoremus in aeternum

[JW]

What version is the most used? Is it still the so called " Old Plainchant" version as found in the Tozer Benedicition manual, sung here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A5UlzR_2eY ?
Incidentally, it's not in Laudate so it needs to be typed out for our people (we haven't used it since 1970). I think HON had a setting but it wasn't this version? It can't be anything fancy as we there aren't musicians at Benediction. I'm aware of a couple of simple plainchant settings but I don't think they are common currency.

[John Ainslie]

However traditional 'Adoremus in aeternum' is - I see that Allegri wrote a setting of it - the words are not good theology. We will not be adoring the Blessed Sacrament for all eternity, nor should we wish to. When we are past this earth, we are past sacraments. "We are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2). Or as the hymn (Anglican!) puts it: "So, Lord, at length when sacraments shall cease / may we be one with all thy Church above /... one with the Trinity in unity".

There are many better texts to use and sing at Eucharistic adoration.

[Ian Coleman]

I think the 'Doh-re-mi-re-doh' incipit for Adoremus is still the best known, although the 'la-soh-la-soh-fa-la-'doh-'doh-ti-la' is a finer melody.
Incidentally, I suspect John is right to be suspicious of the theology behind the Antiphon - but there is another way of looking at it, if you take 'Sacramentum' in its wider sense. In Classical Latin it also had the sense of 'vow' or 'bond' - I think it was used in the Roman army to express the soldier's oath of loyalty. In this sense, you could translate the Antiphon thus:
'Let us adore this most holy bond of unity forever.'
I rather like the expansion of theological possibilities afforded by this wider meaning; it expresses our adoration not just for the sacramental species, but for our incorporation into the Body of Christ that it realises, which I think is the real spiritual 'meat' of the action of the Benediction service. Similar metaphors can be found in the 'commercium' of 'O admirabile commercium' or even in that troublesome little word 'res' in the infamous 'O res mirabilis' of 'Panis Angelicus', and they would chime very well with the all-encompassing world view of Thomas Aquinas' Office of Corpus Christi.
However, the fact that I rather like all this does not mean that we're on very solid ground in a scholarly sense: to be sure that 'sacramentum' has such a wide, rather than narrowly technical, meaning in this Antiphon, we'd need to prove that the text was actually very ancient. Which I strongly suspect it's not....

[HallamPhil]

You should find it near the back of the parish hymnal (maroon cover)

[mcb]

I see that Allegri wrote a setting of it

I don't think he did. There's a setting published in Downside Motets, vol. 1 no. 9 of 1904, edited by R.R. Terry, and it's marked "from Allegri". It must be adapted from something, but I don't know what. (I've asked a couple of times, but no-one's been able to suggest an answer. SC?

[JW]

If a priest is going to intone it, I'd like it to be sung right and I'd like the congregation to have the words! And I wouldn't agree that it is incorrect to use hyperbole and poetic license in hymns - it has been normal to do so since Biblical times. Bl. John Paul II quoted this hymn at the start of a homily in Seville on 12th June 1993. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1993/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19930612_siviglia-cattedrale_sp.html

As for its antiquity or otherwise, all I know is that it was endemic in England in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries as evidenced by Tozer. I have personal experience of its use in Spain in the 1960's, although it was only one of several hymns used while the Blessed Sacrament was returned to the tabernacle. There is a setting by the German, Michael Haller (1840 - 1915), so one can assume it was also used in Germany - probably throughout Europe. I suspect the version I heard last Sunday came from Africa via European missionaries and has been a little corrupted on the journey, hence the original post.

I didn't know of the setting attributed to Allegri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1kuLtfJxJo. I think its a great setting, whether adapted by Terry or otherwise.

[Southern Comfort]

I see that Allegri wrote a setting of it

I don't think he did. There's a setting published in Downside Motets, vol. 1 no. 9 of 1904, edited by R.R. Terry, and it's marked "from Allegri". It must be adapted from something, but I don't know what. (I've asked a couple of times, but no-one's been able to suggest an answer. SC?

It sounds to me very much like a fauxbourdon setting for the even-numbered verses of the Magnificat. I don't know this actual one, but the resemblance to similar settings by Palestrina and many other later Italian composers is very evident so I'd assume that Allegri did the same sort of thing.

[JW]

I've found a reference to Adoremus in aeternum (Allegri) in the Hereford Journal 16 May 1861, before Terry was born.

Terry seems to have championed renaissance music during his time at Downside and included "Gregorio Allegri's Adoremus" in a recital at Downside in 1901 (Bath Chronicle). Whether this was an adaptation of the original or not I can't ascertain.

[FrGareth]

However traditional 'Adoremus in aeternum' is - I see that Allegri wrote a setting of it - the words are not good theology. We will not be adoring the Blessed Sacrament for all eternity, nor should we wish to."

I won't need to adore the Blessed Sacrament when I get to heaven, but I am looking forward to enjoying Jesus face-to-face for the rest of eternity. There is a continuity between the one I now adore in the form of the Eucharistic Presence and the one I will adore face-to-face, so think I can say to him while he is the Blessed Sacrament that I will love him for ever. If a fiance said "I will love my girlfriend for ever", who would dare to say to him: "You are wrong, because you will no longer love your girlfriend when she becomes your wife"!

[John Ainslie]

There is a continuity between the one I now adore in the form of the Eucharistic Presence and the one I will adore face-to-face, so think I can say to him while he is the Blessed Sacrament that I will love him for ever.

That is exactly my point. If I was to say/sing that I will adore Jesus for ever, fine. He is the continuity. It's saying/singing that I will adore the sacrament of his presence for ever that I find odd. However 'real' the Eucharistic Presence now, it is still sacramental, still only a sign of what is to come, and can't compare with the face-to-face presence of the Lord for which we long. "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face" (1 Cor 13:12).