Veni, Veni

All of the voices filling the hall died suddenly, leaving behind only the squeaking of chairs as all turned to face the entrance. Before anything could be seen, the somber chiming of bells could be heard, faintly outlining chords in perfect rhythm. Soon, the room was filled with music, with melody, harmony, and words all at once, joined together in an ancient hymn. Slowly, the song expanded, splitting into more and more harmonies, slowly crescendoing as the story unfolded. As the choir finally reached its place, turning once more to face the people, the song slipped suddenly back to one voice, all of the grandeur of harmony retreating to repeat the melody in its most simple, vulnerable form. Yet before the echo had died from the last syllable of the soloist, the choir returned, slowly rebuilding their parts, to resound the chorus once more in triumph.

When I first heard Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, or more accurately the first time I truly took notice of the hymn, I was a sophomore in high school listening in awe at my brother’s honors choir performance. Later, I found myself listening to it at home, scouring over multiple versions until I found one that resembled the version I’d heard. Suffice it to say, that had not happened for any of the numerous hymns I had heard before up to that point in my life; the song gripped me in a unique way. My appreciation grew as I was able to perform that same version with my brother the next year in that hall, but found its completion when I was able to sing it in Mass with my entire family that same year in its proper place as a celebration of Advent.

Reexamining this hymn through the lens of Gadamer, the three lenses of beauty as Play, Symbol, and Festival can be recognized.

The song is playful in both its melodious and harmonic structure, as well as in its dynamics. The melody of the verse rises and falls rhythmically while the lyrics address Christ in a plea to appear to his people. In this plea, however, the verses reveal aspects of Christ’s relationship to his people, calling him by a new title and describing the ways he saves the faithful. These verses move steadily toward the chorus, where the pattern is broken by two calls to rejoice. Perhaps more significantly, the chorus portrays a change in perspective: instead of a prayer directed toward God, the song becomes a call to the people gathered to rejoice in the promise of salvation. Throughout this alternating of verse and chorus, the harmony and dynamics of the hymn give the song an even greater sense of movement, tying together the verses into a coherent whole. The song is art with a purpose and explicitly calls for the audience to engage with the work, to let the story present bring them to rejoice. Even if they are not singing along, the audience is drawn into the work; or, in the words of Gadamer, “the spectator is manifestly more than an observer who sees what is happening in front of him, but rather is one who is a part of [the work]” (24). The song is ordered toward a particular end and moves with a purpose to draw the listener into the mystery that it present.

The song also exhibits beauty as symbol. The song, which I have experienced most significantly as the inaugural song in a Christmas concert and as the opening song of a Mass in the season of Advent, serves as an “invocation of a potentially whole and holy order of things,” both in the literal sense of its cry for the coming of Christ but also in its rhythmic and haunting melody, which effectively draws the listener away from the world and into the mystery. It is not accidental that songs like Veni, Veni are used in worship — they can unite the listener deeply with what it represents. The hymn is a prime example of Gadamer’s idea of representation: while it does point toward the meaning of Advent, it is in itself the core of the feast itself: a time of meditation on the meaning of the coming of Christ, a cry for Christ to return, and a call for rejoicing on part of the faithful (35). It is not simply a reference to the feast of Advent or of Christmas but is in fact the presence of the feast itself. The song further exhibits the concept Gadamer explains as “unconcealing” and “concealing” (34). The melody of the verse does not change, nor do the lyrics and melody of the chorus. They are readily apparent, or unconcealed, within the first section of the song, and in some sense present the whole song; the chorus is repeated verbatim, and the verses illustrate the same point using different lyrics. However, the song does not stop there: there is much more concealed. As the song progressed, the harmonies and arrangements change, highlighting different aspects of the hymn and revealing them to the listener. As a result, the final chorus can often have a profoundly different impact on the listener, despite being the same in form as the first chorus. It is for perhaps this reason why I felt the need to find and relisten to the song after I heard it that time during my sophomore year. The meaning of the song was always there, and I always was able to experience that meaning in different ways, but cannot experience the totality of its meaning through my human finitude (Gadamer 34).

The hymn also prominently displays beauty as festival. Beyond the obvious sense of the song being a call to celebrate the festival of Advent, it also can be understood under both Gadamer and Pieper’s concepts of festival.

Veni, Veni is a communal experience and is centered around community both in lyrical concept and execution. The verses are pleas on behalf of a people, referencing “Israel” or “people” or “us” explicitly in all but one of the verses. The chorus, likewise, is directed at the people, calling them to rejoice. In fact, the entire song is conceptualized as a song not of a person, but as a people: in Gadamer’s words, there is “no separation between one person and another” (39). In most cases, the song is sung by multiple people, presenting the communal aspect physically. However, even when hummed or sung or listened to alone, the song is inseparable from the communal experience. Similarly, the song is most typically sung during the time of Advent according to the liturgical calendar, but even when experienced at any time, Advent is celebrated by the virtue of the song presenting the season and spirit of the season. In this way, the song, and the festival it represents, instantiates, or marks the time, and not vice versa, as Gadamer describes.

The song is also festive under Pieper’s rubric. The song in its place in the beginning of Advent Mass is not merely there for entertainment, or for distraction to fill the time while the priest and servers prepare for Mass. Rather, it, like “true festivity” in Pieper’s eyes, is an “activity that is meaningful in itself” (9). It is a song that, beyond being pleasing to the ears, calls to those who hear it to contemplate the Advent mystery it reveals. Through its lyrics, it directly orients the listener to contemplate the Divine, with the intention that the listener rejoices in the Divine — both the joy and the orientation toward God being central aspects of Pieper’s conception of festival (22, 31–32). The song is traditional, both in the literal sense that its lyrics were written as early as the twelfth century and in the sense that its meaning, that of Christ coming to save his people, is at the heart of Christian tradition as a whole since the first century. Veni, Veni, in this sense, powerfully connects the mystery of Christian hope throughout generations and interrupts silence not for escapist entertainment but with the intent to call people together to contemplate God and rejoice. It is an affirmation of life as meaningful, as it orients the people of God away from the distractions of their ordinary lives and back toward the hope that we cling to.