United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We thought of the day when the hosts of Israel were encamped here and the antiphonal choirs chanted blessings from Gerizim and curses from Ebal in the ears of the vastest congregation ever gathered on earth. There was no sound now of blessing or cursing. The very stillness was oppressive.
The following example shows this intertwining of higher and lower elements: In the blessing of the baptismal water on the eve of Epiphany, a custom prevalent in the earlier Church of Rome, the priest, while praying to God to sanctify the water, dipped a crucifix thrice into it, recalling in his prayer the miracle described in Exodus, the sweetening of the bitter water with wood; then followed antiphonal singing describing Christ's baptism in Jordan, which sanctified the water.
After dinner the chair-bearers gathered round and with the aid of the interpreter I took down as best I could some of their calls and responses, a sort of antiphonal chorus handed down from generation to generation of coolies. Thus the men in front cry, "Lao di!" "Something in the road!" and those behind call back, "Ti chi!" "Lift higher!" or maybe it is "Chiao kao!"
The psychological quality of every great master must eventually be determined by his mode of dealing with the phenomena of sex. In Pheidias we find a large impartiality. His men and women are cast in the same mould of grandeur, inspired with equal strength and sweetness, antiphonal notes in dual harmony.
Then was instituted, amid that long-protracted religious meeting that beautiful antiphonal chant of Ambrose, which afterwards, modified and simplified by Pope Gregory, became the great attraction of religious worship in all the cathedrals and abbeys and churches of Europe for more than one thousand years.
The day happened to be Sunday, and it did occur to me that possibly this was the woodpeckers' ritual, a kind of High Church service, with antiphonal choirs. But I dismissed the thought; for, on the whole, the shouting seems more likely to be diagnostic, and in spite of his gold-lined wings, I have set the flicker down as almost certainly an old-fashioned Methodist.
And from the first a peculiar kind of singing the antiphonal or responsorial, answering to our cathedral chanting had been used in honour of the sacred doctrine which heresy assailed. Ignatius, the disciple of St. Peter, was reported to have introduced the practice into the Church of Antioch, in the doxology to the Trinity.
There was some antiphonal reciting, and then a long selection which the young man in robes read with the same voice of solemn triumph. It is doubtful if anybody in the church followed him with the fascinated attention of the young evolutionist. Soon the organ rumbled, and the little choir, standing, broke into song. For all the Saints who from their labors rest.... Saints!
This is, however, only the opening of the orchestra. The cocks wake up if there is the faintest moonshine and begin an antiphonal service between responsive barn-yards.
As the notes of the verse died away the answer came from other voices in deep, appealing antiphonal: "He hath showed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts."
Word Of The Day