Description
Rorate caeli desuper is a glowing example of Byrd’s ability to interweave intricate yet beautiful melodic lines while preserving clarity of text. A votive introit for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, it bubbles with all the excitement of the festive season. The opening section’s motivic material features lively interplay between rapidly ascending and descending scales, vividly evoking the showering skies. The more intimate inner trio treats these scales in a narrower compass, its tight imitative exchanges giving the music an almost conversational character. This stands in deliberate contrast to the fuller, more expansive doxology, which offers moments of chordal grandeur.
© Owain Park 2025
Rorate caeli desuper,
et nubes pluant justum:
aperiatur terra, et germinet salvatorem.
Benedixisti, Domine, terram tuam:
avertisti captivitatem Jacob.
Gloria Patri, et Filio,
et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Drop down, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain justice:
let the earth be opened, and bear a saviour.
You have blessed, Lord, your land:
You have overturned the captivity of Jacob.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Isaiah 45: 8; Psalm 84 (85): 1
