Religion: Words & Music

Painters and architects have for years been giving a contemporary look to liturgy. Composers and poets, while slower, have also produced some of their wares in church. A new example is a slim hymnal published last week.

It includes 40 hymns, responses, prayers, glorias and amens, all composed by 41-year-old Composer-Pianist Vincent Persichetti. to fit verses by more than a dozen poets, including famed versifier Anon. A teacher at Manhattan's Juilliard

School of Music, whose work has been performed by the Philadelphia and Louis ville Orchestras, Philadelphia-born Persi chetti is also editor of the small music publishing house Elkan-Vogel, which has published his paperbound Hymns and Responses for the Church Year ($1). An eclectic churchgoer himself, Persichetti expects his hymnal to appeal to adven turous congregations of all Protestant denominations. Choir directors at Lu theran, Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches have already indicated interest.

Persichetti's tunes are fresh and sing able; their lyrics contain more surprises.

For the poets he has chosen range from Auden and Emily Dickinson through John Quincy Adams to Shakespeare, whose Epilogue to The Tempest provides a sol emn Prayer Response: My ending is despair, Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults.

Conrad Aiken contributes an Opening Response: Lord, Lord, give us Thy day, that once more we may be the endless miracle that embodies Thee. And a Wal lace Stevens' poem becomes an Evening Response: We say God and the imagination are one . . . How high that highest candle lights the dark,

Composer Persichetti suggests a poem by e. e. cummings as a Christmas hymn. First verse: purer than purest ptire whisper of whisper so, so (big with innocence) forgivingly a once of eager glory, no more miracle may grow.

As a hymnwright. Anglican Auden stands up best of the moderns:

Our Father, whose creative Will Asked Being for us all, Confirm it that Thy Primal Love May weave in us the freedom of The actually deficient on The justly actual.

Though written by Thy children with

A smudged and crooked line,

The Word is ever legible,

Thy Meaning unequivocal,

And for Thy Goodness even sin

Is valid as a sign.