Vatican picks music by English composer Paul Inwood as official Year of Mercy hymn

Report from The Tablet

06 August 2015 17:40 by Liz Dodd

The Vatican has chosen a composition by English Catholic composer Paul Inwood to be the official setting for the hymn of the Holy Year of Mercy.

Mr Inwood’s setting was judged the best entry in an international competition organised by The Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation and judged by a committee that included Mgr Massimo Palombella, Director of the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Catholic News Service report

The text of the hymn in Latin and Italian was written by Jesuit Father Eugenio Costa and was sent to the 90 composers March 31, just over two weeks after Pope Francis announced the Year of Mercy would open Dec. 8.

The verses feature lines from Scripture punctuated by the Latin phrase "in aeternum misericordia eius," which means "his mercy is forever."

The interspersed Latin, Inwood wrote in a press release, makes the verses "a kind of litany."

Like the text, he wrote, "my music is also a mixture, with elements in the style of a Taize response and a Gelineau tone," a modern homage to chant often used today when singing the Psalms at Mass and other liturgies.

Inwood said he wrote the English and French words of the song, and the Gelineau tone, which allows for a wide variety of syllables to be sung in every bar, should make it easy to translate the song into other languages as well

Links

Eugenio Costa also recorded a great interview about the significance of Missa Luba, a setting I have loved since first hearing it in the late 60s.