CHORAL | RickBirleyCompositions

Gaudete, Gaudete!

Your Presence

MISSA BREVIS

Kyrie

Gloria

Sanctus

Benedictus

Agnus Dei

Magnificat

Nunc Dimittis

I Sing of a Maiden

ADVENT CAROL SUCCESSION

Universal Truth

Commissioned by Peter Oakes for the Thomas Hardye Singers this recording is the second performance with the Occasional Singers. The soloists are Louise Wayman and Gareth Jones, with Peter directing.

Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo –

[“Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems”

Scientific research officially banned by the Church late in April 1633. Galileo was placed under house arrest for an unlimited period. He died in 1641, having gone blind.]

The text was compiled/written by me, and makes use of sayings of both Galileo and the Catholic Church:

As day follows night

So Galileo was right

One universal truth

Followed another [RB]

In questions of science

The authority of a thousand

Is not worth the humble reasoning

Of a single individual [Galileo]

What would you say of the learned here

Who have steadfastly refused

To cast a glance

Through the telescope

What shall we make of this?

Shall we laugh

Or shall we cry? [A letter written by Galileo in 1610 to Kepler]

I do not feel obliged to believe

that the same God

Who has endowed us with sense

Reason

And intellect

Has intended us

To forgo their use [Galileo]

All truths are easy to understand

Once they are discovered

The point is

To discover them [Gallileo]

Simplico [in the Dialogo the character Simplicius is the defender of the Aristotelian Geocentric view, and Pope Urban VIII took offence, thinking the character referred to him] the holy fool

Found Galileo – the Wrangler –

On his holy Mount

With the Inquisition [the Inquisition trial was held in April 1633] as his tool

Forced him to recant

And thus avoid a burning

The Earth continued turning

And science its learning [RB]

I have never met a man so ignorant

That I couldn't learn something from him [Galileo]

The square-cube law

And Pisa’s cannon-balls

Falling, as everyone saw,

Through the ruins

Of Aristotle’s hallowed halls,

Stood learning on its head [RB]

You can plainly see that if a horse

Were to fall from a height

Of three or four feet

It could break its bones

Whereas a dog

Would not suffer injury

The same applies to a cat

From a height of as much as

Eight or ten feet

To a grasshopper

From the top of a tower

And to an ant

Falling down from the moon

Nature could not allow a horse

To become as big as

Twenty horses

Nor a giant

As big as ten men

Unless she were to change

The proportions of all its members

Particularly the bones

Thus the common assumption

That great and small structures

Are equally tough

Is obviously

Wrong

[From the Discorsi - scientific prose of Gallileo: commonsense observations used to dismiss a common misconception and hints at a rational way ahead. The examples highlight how Aristotle's theories are mistaken.]

If the Earth is a planet,

And only one among several planets,

It cannot be that any such great things

Have been done specially for it

As the Christian doctrine teaches.

If there are other planets,

Since God makes nothing in vain,

They must be inhabited;

But how can their inhabitants

Be descended

From Adam?

How can they trace back their origin

To Noah's Ark?

How can they have been redeemed

By the Saviour?

[Church scholar Cardinal Bellarmin was chief amongst those demanding Galileo's recantation. This declaration was contemporary Church scholarship.]

Eppur si muove!

And yet it moves!

[Famously uttered by Galileo shortly after his recantation]

I wrote and printed a book

In which I discuss this doctrine

Already condemned,

And adduce arguments of great cogency

In its favour,

Without presenting any solution of these;

And for this cause

I had been pronounced by the Holy Office

To be vehemently suspected

Of heresy,

That is to say,

Of having held and believed

That the sun is the centre of the world

And immovable,

And that the Earth

Is not the centre

And moves:

Eppur si muove!

And yet it moves!

So help me God,

And these His holy Gospels,

Which I touch with my hands.

I, Galileo Galilei,

Have abjured as above

With my own hand

[From Galileo's recantation of his heliocentric ideas, recited at Rome, In the Convent of Minerva, on 22nd June 1633.]

Eppur si muove!

And yet it moves!

New conditions have their impact finally

On religious life itself.

The rise of a critical spirit

Purifies it of a magical view of the world

And of superstitions

That still circulate,

And it exacts a more personal

And explicit

Adherence to faith;

As a result,

Many persons are achieving

A more vivid sense

Of God

[from the Vatican Council, “Gaudium et spes” No.7. This is the Catholic Church's contemporary view of the collaboration of religion and modern science. It was given in an address by Pope John Paul II on November 10th 1979 at the Einstein session of the Pontifical Academy of Science, Vatican City. It was not until 31st October 1992 that Pope John Paul II officially announced that the Church had mishandled the case of Galileo]

Eppur si muove! The old man muttered

And yet it moves! The old earth trembling

On its axis, and briefly, briefly stuttered

Aging certainties quietly dissembling:

As day follows night

And sight becomes blind

So Galileo was right

And sound of mind.

One universal truth

Followed another [RB]