Sapientiae Lux began as a desire to bring a passage of Augustine to life which he wrote near the end of his work called On the Happy Life or De beata vita. Here is that passage:
. . . A certain inward prompting stirs within us—urging us to remember God, to seek Him, and to thirst for Him once every trace of dullness is shaken off. This urging itself flows from that very Fountain of Truth. It is that hidden Sun who pours His radiance into the inner eyes of our hearts. Everything true that we speak belongs to Him, even when our eyes are still weak or only suddenly opened, and we boldly try to turn toward the whole vision yet tremble to look directly at it. For what we see—even in this partial glimpse—appears to be nothing other than God Himself, perfect and unchanging, untouched by any degeneration.
There, everything is whole and complete—and at the same time, He is the Almighty God. Yet so long as we are still seeking, we must admit that we have not yet reached the Source itself, or, to use the right word, the fullness that would completely satisfy us. Even with God’s help, we are not yet truly wise or blessed.
That full satisfaction of the soul—that is the blessed life: to know, with reverent and complete understanding, by whom you are led into truth, by what truth you are filled with joy, and by what bond you are joined to the Supreme Good. These three together—when rightly understood—show one God and one substance, sweeping away the vanities of false superstitions.
At this, our mother, recalling words that were deeply fixed in her memory, awakened in faith and joyfully recited the verse of our priest’s hymn:
“Favor those who pray to you, O Trinity.”
Then she added, “This indeed—without any doubt—is the blessed life, the perfect life. And we must confidently believe that, as we hurry toward it, we can be brought there through firm faith, eager hope, and burning love.”“So then,” I said, “since the time itself reminds us to set a pause between our feasts, I give, as best I can, thanks to the highest and true God—the Father, the Lord, the Liberator of souls—and then to you, who have been such harmonious guests and have heaped me with many gifts. For you have contributed so much to our conversation that I cannot deny I have been filled and satisfied by my own guests.”
Everyone rejoiced and praised God.
“How I wish,” said Trygetius, “that you would feed us like this every day!”“The kind of measure we must keep,” I replied, “is the one to be kept everywhere, and loved everywhere—if your hearts truly desire our return to God.”
After these words, the discussion came to an end, and we departed.
I was captivated by this passage and encouraged by the joy of Monica and wanted to express it in music. At the time I recall I had actually finished the album in the sense for me that I had already had it hit as finished. So this was to me a bonus track I thought. As it turned out this bonus track was more challenging than might be supposed as I learned the A.I. tools at their present stage tend to resist generating songs with multiple voices. I think it has to do with such things being less usual on the typical song and so the models tend to steer things in a direction more expected which is usually a good thing except when you’re trying to do something very creative and specific like having a male singer sing verses and a female sing the chorus. After countless attempts and many micro adjustments I did finally manage it as you can hear below. Woot! Praise God it worked. So cool!
This song really blessed me and over time the desire grew to try a similar approach with other songs. This merged with the developing vision of Augustinus Vox to the result that I began to do some experiments with the existing music. First I began with covers of a few songs keeping the lyrics and melody intact but prompting for a female vocalist which was very cool. This eventually let to experiments with modifying the musical style. In the end I found most enjoyment with using lyrics with a new style as this prompted more unique and surprising renditions of the songs that hit different but unique. From here it was a quick path to recreating a draft of Against the Skeptics in an entirely new rockin’ style.
All this to say . . . I am very excited by Sapientiae Lux and looking forward to experiencing the journey of Augustine and friends through a new luminous and heartfelt sound. Thanks for hanging in with me on this description of the journey!
And now for a little suprise!
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A little hymn of Ambrose . . . Lux style!
Creator of All (inspired by Deus creator omnium)
I created this song as I was developing this website and working on the Ambrosian Hymns album by Augustinus Vox. The album is very good to me and I thought what would it sounds like sung by Lux. Once I heard it I couldn’t get away from it so modified things so this is the debug song for Lux.