Of the Brook
The scene of the Annunciation is rendered in any number of wonderful works of art. Dearest to me is that of the Carmelite painter Fra’ Filippo Lippi (1406-69). Rarely have I been to London without stealing time to go and pause before it in the National Gallery. The silent conversation between the Virgin and God’s Angel is depicted incomparably. The essence of this feast, however, the fact that it commemorates the moment in which the Word became flesh, is impossible to render pictorially. For that, we need music. An account is given us in Handel’s Cantata Dixit Dominus, a setting of Psalm 109. The Psalm’s finally verse reads thus: ‘He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head.’ The Fathers found in this phrase a prophecy of the incarnation, of God’s stooping to drink of the water that quenches our thirst along life’s tortuous, beautiful, often painful path. This version, sung by Annick Massis and Magdalena Kožená, takes us as close to the heart of the mystery as it is possible to get by sensory means.
