On This Day, O Beautiful Mother: A Song History

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"On This Day, O Beautiful Mother" is an English-language Catholic hymn to the Virgin Mary, and the hymnal records consulted here name no author for its words.[1] Hymnary.org traces the text to Rohr's Favorite Catholic Melodies, which its index dates to 1854 in Boston, while several modern hymnals give that source as 1857, so sources differ on the year.[1] Over the next century it passed through a long line of Catholic hymnals, many of them made for young people, sodalities and Sunday schools, including the St. Basil's books that carried it in editions from 1888 into the 1920s; Hymnary.org counts 29 hymnals in all.[1]

Gothic panel painting of Christ placing a crown on the kneeling Virgin Mary, with angel musicians

Master of the Fröndenberg Altarpiece, Coronation of the Virgin, tempera and gold on wood, c. 1410. Shown for its subject, Mary crowned; it has no connection to the hymn.

The melody, known as BEAUTIFUL MOTHER, is credited to Louis Lambillotte in Hymnary.org's entries for Laudis Corona of 1880, the 1935 St. Cecilia Hymnal and several present-day Catholic books.[2] The sources consulted here do not tie the tune to any particular publication of his, so the credit rests on those hymnal attributions.[2] Lambillotte (1796–1855) was a Belgian Jesuit who spent some thirty years in Jesuit colleges in France, Switzerland and Belgium, writing French cantiques and other music for their ceremonies that proved very popular in schools.[3] The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 remembered him chiefly for his pioneering work on restoring Gregorian chant, which included a facsimile edition of a St. Gall manuscript published in Brussels in 1851.[3]

The hymn remains in Catholic use, appearing in Journeysongs, Breaking Bread, We Celebrate and The Saint Michael Hymnal; We Celebrate files it under the crowning of an image of Mary.[1] Dana Gruber gives it a mountain dulcimer setting in Grace, a 55-page Fingers Of Steel collection of hymns and other reflective pieces, written out in tablature with chords for a guitarist to follow.[4]

Our book that contains the song "On This Day, O Beautiful Mother"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "On This Day, O Beautiful Mother" (text).
  2. Hymnary.org: "BEAUTIFUL MOTHER" (tune).
  3. Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent): "Louis Lambillotte".
  4. Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Grace".
  5. Image: Master of the Fröndenberg Altarpiece, Coronation of the Virgin, tempera and gold on wood, c. 1410. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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