One of our contributors, V. J. Tarantino, composed an original musical setting of the St. Michael Prayer, a few years ago. In honor of the Feast of the Holy Archangels (not celebrated liturgically this year, as it falls on Sunday), we are sharing this music with you.

WPI : How do you come to the idea of writing a setting of the Saint Michael Prayer?

V.J. Tarantino: I’m the co-founder of a Private Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport called Sacred Beauty; we are dedicated to offering art, study, and service to the honor of our Eucharistic Lord and of the liturgy. In 2018, after the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, our ordinary, Bishop Frank [Caggiano], offered a Mass of Reparation and Purification and instituted the praying of the St. Michael Prayer after every Mass in the diocese. At the time, I wasn’t aware of any musical setting of the prayer, so it seemed appropriate.

WPI: This piece is really beautiful. What did you have in mind? How did you get to this? It’s clearly influenced by Gregorian chant, but it’s also very different from the Gregorian chant most of us are familiar with. What principles did you use to write this?

V.J. Tarantino: First of all, I felt no particular need at all to be tied to any of the traditional modes in doing this. The prayer itself is a modern composition, which Pope Leo XIII wrote.

WPI: Yes, in 1884,

V.J. Tarantino: And even per Pope Francis, chant has primacy in the realm of liturgical music, but music’s developed, too.

So as chant, it’s amodal, but it’s driven by decisions which are almost more theological than musical, although I think that, as both art and theology deal with deep truth and pre-existing form, you wouldn’t expect them to diverge too much. It’s just that the angle I’m coming in at is much more theological, so every interval and melismatic section is thought out in terms of what it’s expressing theologically.

The first challenge, the most obvious one, is that there are some really, really ugly words and concepts that need to be articulated musically, like satanam, diaboli and spiritus malignus. And the question was, artistically, should these be made kind of jarring and ugly musically – you know, set them in tritones or something like that – or do I incorporate them into a larger, overarching whole in which they don’t disrupt the beauty?

I went with the latter – although I use the lowest notes of the composition for those words. I find those notes very beautiful and very rich. But it seems kind of evident why I would do that; it feels intuitively right. I think most anybody would see that.

WPI: Did you have any specific inspirations?

V.J. Tarantino: Bishop Frank showed us this object that he had in the Diocesan Patrimony called the Sword of Saint Michael, which was an actual sword.

And I decided that, for this piece, the sword should be the word God. So I used the octave-fifth-octave combination found in the chant of St. Hildegard of Bingen to really make that the focal point, to express that musically and vocally with a lot of power. And of course anything Hildegardian is genius. And if you notice the melismas, they come on words like divina, and it’s all descending from the heavens, but not totally smoothly. There’s that little hesitation.

WPI: How so?

V.J. Tarantino: That the efficacy of this prayer depends on our cooperation. It’s not just a Deus ex machina.

WPI: No pun intended. You have the same dynamic on militiae caelestis…

V.J. Tarantino: With a little wobble or hesitation – it’s descending from the heavens, but is it going to be totally accepted? There’s that tension, that it demands acceptance, that grace can remain unclaimed.

WPI: What about the figure of St. Michael himself?

V.J. Tarantino: So this is something that I use in my chants a lot. Michael – (sings) Mich-a-el… that threefold, Trinitarian stability, such that both the pitch and length of the notes are equal. So there is that power of God, that sanctifying grace that’s present in Michael, that can then later explode into the octave-fifth-octave on Deus.

WPI: And that is Michael’s question – Who is like God? – in a certain sense answering itself. God is three and one.

V.J. Tarantino: Of course, Michael’s not the equivalent, so…

WPI: No.

V.J. Tarantino: …he has that little creaturely flourish. It’s not the total abiding stability of Aseitas, but it’s a participation in it. So you see that right at the tail end of the word Michael. In a lot of hymns that I find most beautiful, I’ve noticed they have that grouping of three; I’d have to think of examples, but many things I find really, really beautiful make use of that. In fact, it’s almost kind of a constant.

WPI: You mentioned your use of low notes – for the powers of evil, yes, but also elsewhere I find interesting…

V.J. Tarantino: Yes, I used a low note again on defende nos – you know, out of the depths I cry to the Lord. That nos is actually not set any lower than the adversaries. You know, that’s us and our sinfulness right there.

WPI: What about your other melismas?

V.J. Tarantino: Supplices is melismatic, the inspiration for our supplication descending through the choirs, as it were.

The other place where there’s an extended melisma is mundo, the world. The world is incredibly embattled; it carries all of this potential to be less than itself, to be more than itself, to rise into its identity. And that’s really the point of the greatest battle. And so you hear that tug back and forth. Likewise, proelio – battle – is melismatic. So mundo is just totally embattled. It’s the realm of the dramatic.

And yes, militiae caelestis; it’s a different melismatic sequence, but it starts on the same note as Mundo, just an octave higher. Heaven is a place of dynamism and expansion, constant but not static – the place of the aeviternal.

WPI: One last thing – how did you feel, singing this piece of your own?

V.J. Tarantino: Well, we sang this piece as a schola of four, with harmonies, at the Mass of Reparation and Purification – that was difficult. That liturgy, at which all the priests of the diocese were present, was so painful and heavy; Bishop Frank said in his homily that it was like cleaning out a wound. Singing for this recording was a totally different experience; I’m just grateful to be able to share this music with the Where Peter Is community.