Exceeding glorious Father and Lord, who deckest thyself with light as with a garment; who spreadest out the heavens like a curtain: mighty creator of this and every world, of all stars and planets in their courses: We thy children render unto thee our praise and honour for the wonder of thy handiwork — for the beauty of creation, and at this season most especially for the blessing of new life and hope, visible in the face of our mother the earth as she awakens to Spring. In her awakening we see Christ triumphant over death. In her we see the rejoicing of St Mary Magdalen, first witness of the Resurrection. In her we see the fruitfulness of our most blessèd and glorious Lady the Virgin Mary — through whom thou hast given us the Light of the World, the light that shineth in darkness, the Word Made Flesh. As City and Universities, in unity and concord, we celebrate before thee today the birth of an earthly morning. We pray thee, use the beauty of this creation to knit our hearts to the things that endure to eternity, that we may rejoice at the dawning of the endless day of the kingdom of thy Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
YESTERDAY morning, as they have done on May morning for more than 500 years, the choir of Magdalen College ascended the college’s Great Tower at dawn to sing to a crowd of tens of thousands of revellers below. The tradition’s origins are thought to date from an obit (requiem mass) sung from the top of the tower in the early 16th century, but the ceremony that has evolved — and that attracts such huge numbers each year — mixes the sacred with the secular, the pagan with the divine, to unique effect.
Some revellers have set early alarms; many haven’t been to bed at all. Students stand on Magdalen Bridge alongside townsfolk, morris dancers alongside Druids, tourists, and locals, young and old together; and the mood is celebratory. Then, as the clock strikes six, the crowd falls silent, and the choir begins its rendition of Hymnus Eucharisticus by my 17th-century predecessor Benjamin Rogers. Five verses of a Latin hymn to a rather unremarkable tune are followed by the May Morning Prayer, and, in a flash, the mood changes as the choir launches into Thomas Morley’s jaunty and rather bawdy madrigal “Now is the month of Maying” and a selection of playful part-songs.
Amplified through speakers, the May Morning Prayer, recited by the Dean of Divinity, dressed in cassock, surplice, and stole, some 150 feet above the crowd, represents the still point in this bizarre ceremony as the city marks the arrival of the sun on the first day of May. Many in the crowd bow their heads, others look up into the sky, and there is a solemnity to that moment which is deeply moving for those of us involved. I will never forget, on my first May Morning eight years ago, the reverent hush that fell over the crowd as the Dean spoke these words.
The text, adapted over many years by clerics at the college, draws on Isaiah and the Psalms (“spreadest out the heavens like a curtain” and “the wonder of thy handiwork”), on the New Testament (“the Light of the World, the light that shineth in darkness, the Word Made Flesh”), and evokes the words heard in civic services in cathedrals and parish churches across the land (“As City and universities, in unity and concord”). Other images are drawn from more pagan language associated with spring and summer (“the birth of an earthly morning”); and there are hints of e. e. cummings’s poem: “i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirit of trees and a blue true dream of sky”.
The college’s patron saint, Mary Magdalen, and the Virgin Mary are both celebrated in the context of dawn and new birth as “the first witness of the resurrection” and as the “fruitful” mother of our Saviour; the closing line of the prayer draws together notions of dawn, nature, creation, and eternity; and the final “Amen” acts as an upbeat to the first madrigal — and the fun begins.
No director of any choir would choose to have their biggest gig of the year on a chilly rooftop at six in the morning, performing to a crowd of dazed and drunken roisterers, but, as the rising sun casts its glow over the golden stone of this ancient city, if I can remember to take a breath while simultaneously keeping focused a bunch of over-excited children and students, I open myself to the wonders of creation and the beauty of God’s handiwork, and to the small part that I am playing in something both historic and very much of the moment.
I am reminded, if only fleetingly, of the transcendence that music — made in the strangest of circumstances — can afford, and of the unique privilege that it is to play a part in something that brings earth a little closer to heaven.
Mark Williams is Informator Choristarum, Organist, and Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford,
