Talk:Conditor alme siderum

Image
At a glance, the image has nothing to do with the hymn, and it makes the article look like something about astronomy. Please consider to make a connection in the caption. Perhaps clarify further by using an infobox such as Locus iste (Bruckner) has. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:56, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, although I do also like the picture given. I was hoping to find a MS page showing this at the head of the chants of the first day in Advent (shown with at least one search result when I entered the hymn title). I can't download one presently but if there's a wikimedia link that would be an appropriate addition--maybe even replacement as the header photo, although I don't mind it so much where it is.

Also, more info on the reason for the second text version might be good to add. While Latin usage changed, was it so different by then that only a new version would be intelligible to the singers, or were there expressions that had come to be seen as theologically objectionable? Or was it just to "spiff it up"? 209.6.47.220 (talk) 15:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)


 * No. Urban VIII modified the hymns in the seventeenth century, which meant that henceforth the vast majority of clerics praying the Breviarium Romanum would use a text written in classical Latin rather than in post-classical Christian Latin. Monks and other religious (everyone from Benedictines to Dominicans and other orders with their own proper office) as well as certain chapters of secular canons continued to use the original text of the hymns. Johnnygoesmarchinghome (talk) 22:04, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Text and translation
I'm going to go ahead and add a translation of the original hymn. Aside from the first stanza and to an extent the doxology, the hymns are entirely different, so the article should reflect that. The monks of Solesmes (or perhaps Dom Anselmo Lentini, OSB, who supervised the revision of the hymns in the creation of the Liturgia Horarum, which is, by the way, not the "traditional" breviary) used a different doxology in Antiphonale Romanum II for, not the one found in the appendix of the 1912 Antiphonale Romanum which contains the ancient texts. Johnnygoesmarchinghome (talk) 22:09, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I've removed the translation per WP:NOTLYRICS. This version is practically unheard of, and otherwise adds very little as it is not discussed (unlike the original Latin it is based on, which is useful as a source of comparison with the altered version). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * [in response to removed comment, which is useful clarification even without it] Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a lyrics database. We give metrical translations where these are used frequently or where they are a major topic of discussion (so for example, Ein feste Burg contains both the original German and the well-known English translation, even if it departs sometimes significantly from the original [although it stays overall close to it]; Adeste fideles only includes the most common metrical translation, which remains close enough to the original latin). If you insist, a literal translation could be a compromise. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * well, the translation that I provided is not strictly literal, but it is somewhat more faithful than the Neale translation, and that still leaves the problem of Creator alme siderum without a translation. I don't think that more than a few people are sufficiently good Latinists to tell the difference in meaning: it's not just a correction of vocabulary to more classical forms or of the meter, but an entire rewrite.


 * I'm aware that it's an encyclopedia, not a lyrics database… The contribution was not meant to insert the words without any context, which I think ought to go without saying, fwiw, even if you judge that it does (which is another question of which the outcome doesn't particularly matter to me). Johnnygoesmarchinghome (talk) 17:47, 29 November 2021 (UTC)