Creator Alme Siderum
CREATOR ALME SIDERUM
An office hymn of five strophes in iambic dimeter traditionally sung at Vespers during Advent. It was extensively revised in the Roman Breviary of 1632 from an earlier—perhaps 7th-century—Ambrosian hymn, Conditor alme siderum. According to Britt (175), only one line was unaltered and 12 words left unchanged. The revisions resulted in a distortion of music, sense, and main idea, in the opinion of Connelly (51). The theme of this Advent hymn is Christ, who came in the flesh and in weakness in the past (lines 5–12) and whose coming now makes men tremble at His name (lines 13–16); in answer to prayer He will defend man from the enemy when, at the end of the world, He comes as Judge.
Bibliography: h. a. daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus, 5 v. (Halle-Leipzig 1841–56) 1:74, text. Analecta hymnica 51:46. a. s. walpole, ed., Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, Eng. 1922) 299–302. m. britt, ed., The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal (new ed. New York 1948) 75. j. connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (Westminster, MD 1957) 51, Eng. tr.
[m. m. beyenka]