Non nobis is a short Latin hymn used as a prayer of thanksgiving and expression of humility. The Latin text derives from Psalm 113:9 (according to the Vulgate numbering), which corresponds to Psalm 115:1 in the King James Version. It reads,
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Non nobis, non nobis, Domine |
Not to us, not to us, O Lord, |
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It was often associated with the Knights Templar during the Crusades.
Non nobis Domine is now known in the form of a sixteenth-century canon derived from two passages in the motet Aspice Domine (a5) by the South Netherlandish lutenist and composer Philip van Wilder, who worked at the English court from c. 1520 until his death in 1554. Van Wilder's motet contains both the two related motifs which were apparently extracted from the motet by a later musician during the reign of Elizabeth I to form the canon subject. Although the two passages are not heard consecutively, a link between them is formed by the fact that they both set the text-phrase ‘non est qui consoletur’ (‘there is none to console’).
Van Wilder's motet was widely sung in Elizabethan recusant circles, as the seven surviving manuscript sources show. It provided a model for Byrd's famous Civitas sancti tui (Ne irascaris Domine Part II). One factor in its popularity was undoubtedly its text, a responsory from the Roman and Sarum Breviaries which was sung during the weeks before Advent. It laments the desolation of the Holy City in language derived from Jeremiah:
Aspice Domine, quia facta est desolata civitas plena divitiis, sedet in tristitia domina gentium: non est qui consoletur eam, nisi tu Deus noster (2) Plorans ploravit in nocte, et lacrimae eius in maxillis eius. Non est qui consoletur eam, nisi tu Deus noster.
(Behold, Lord, for the city once full of riches is made desolate, she who ruled the peoples sits in sadness: there is none to console her but thou, our God. (2) She wept sorely in the night, and her tears were on her cheeks: there is none to console her but thou, our God).
Texts of this type (which also feature widely in Byrd's penitential and political motets of the 1580s) were widely read by the Elizabethan recusant community in contemporary terms as expressions of Catholic nostalgia for the old religious order. The Non est qui consoletur canon was probably widely sung in recusant circles with the same connotations. Although this version has not survived in written form, the canon subject was simple enough to have been memorized and transmitted orally.
The next stage in the development of the canon was the text substitution, which occurred early in the seventeenth century. The earliest known notated source for the canon is the so-called Bull MS,[1] completed about 1620. Here it is given with no text, but it is clear from the contour of the melody and the repeated notes that this version was designed to fit the Non nobis Domine text, which must have been in place by this time. The new text had a liturgical significance for contemporary listeners which is not immediately obvious today. The words, which form the first verse of Psalm 115 in the Protestant translations of the Psalter, are quoted in the First Collect of the special service of thanksgiving instituted by Act of Parliament following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and added to the Book of Common Prayer.
ALMIGHTY God, who hast in all ages shewed thy power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of thy Church, and in the protection of righteous and religious Kings and States, professing thy holy and eternal truth, from the wicked conspiracies and malicious practices of all the enemies thereof; We yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our gracious Sovereign King James, the Queen, the Prince, and all the Royal Branches, with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England, then assembled in Parliament, by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous, and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages. From this unnatural conspiracy, not our merit, but thy mercy; not our foresight, but thy providence, delivered us: And therefore, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us; but unto thy Name be ascribed all honour and glory in all Churches of the saints, from generation to generation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The psalm test, which forms a focus for the rest of the collect, supplies the background to the new version of the canon, which must have been sung in many loyal Protestant households on 5 November (the anniversary of the discovery of the plot) as an act of thanksgiving for deliverance and a counterblast to the Catholic version. The collect, which remained in the prayer-book until 1859, would have served as a constant reminder of the patriotic associations of the Non nobis Domine canon, and does much to explain its continued popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The later history of the canon has been researched by the late Philip Brett. Non nobis Domine appeared in print in Playford's Musical Banquet (1651), Hilton's Catch that catch can (1652) and Playford's Introduction to the Skill of Musick (1655), in all three cases anonymously. In 1715 the musician and antiquarian Thomas Tudway attributed it to Thomas Morley (Lbm Harley 7337 f. 192v). Another antiquarian, the unreliable Johann Christoph Pepusch, printed it in his Treatise on Harmony (1730) with an attribution to Byrd which, though unfounded, has gained traditional acceptance. This attribution was repeated in the earliest known Continental source, Johann Mattheson's Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739). The canon forms the basis of the first movement of Concerto III from a set of six Concerti armonici by Count Unico Willem van Wassenaer (formerly attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi or Carlo Ricciotti) published in The Hague in 1739, where it is labelled Canone di Palestrina, and it is printed as an appendix to a set of concertos by Richard Mudge published by John Walsh in 1749. There are surviving copies of the Non nobis Domine canon in the hands of both Mozart and Beethoven. In England the canon came to form part of the repertory of ‘glee clubs’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has traditionally been sung as a grace at public dinners. In modern times it has been quoted by Michael Tippett in his Shires Suite (1970).
Shakespeare, in his play Henry V, has the king proclaim the singing of both the Non nobis and Te Deum after the victory at Agincourt. For the 1989 film adaptation by Kenneth Branagh, Patrick Doyle composed (and sang) a completely different setting that adapted the words slightly.
Non nobis Domine is usually sung as a three-part perpetual canon with the two comites entering at the lower fourth and lower octave in relation to the dux. This is the version given in most of the early sources, but many other solutions are technically possible, a fact which has no doubt contributed much to its enduring appeal.
Non Nobis, Domine! Is the official school song of Craigholme Girls School, Glasgow, UK and The High School For Girls, Gloucester. It is also the official slogan of Guildford County School in Surrey, UK.