Let Us Rejoice While We Are Young

William Hogarth, Scholars at a Lecture, engraving, 1736/37

The end of August is here, and that means that it is time to take my neckties out of storage, put my patented dirty looks back on my face, and get ready to go back into the classroom. It is my privilege to teach music and art history at an excellent school run by a Benedictine monastery here in Washington. Certain anonymous commenters here may not think it is possible, but I receive daily lessons in humility by working at the side of monks, men whose simple eloquence comes from their unquestioning devotion to silence and the treasury of learning. Yesterday morning, one of the senior monks grabbed my arm to let me know, as he often does, what musical phrase was running through his head on the first full day that our students were back in school. He hummed the Gaudeamus igitur theme from the coda of Brahms's Academic Festival Overture, and I have been hearing the same piece in my inner ear ever since. So, with students everywhere, let us sing:

Gaudeamus igitur Juvenes dum sumus! Post jucundum juventutem Post molestam senectutem Nos habebit humus. Vivat academia Vivant professores Vivat membrum quodlibet Vivat membra quaelibet Semper sint in flore. Vivant et republica et qui illam regit. Vivat nostra civitas, Maecenatum caritas Quae nos hic protegit.

Let us therefore be happy While we are young! After a jolly youth After a troublesome old age The earth will have us. Long live the academy! Long live the teachers! Long live each and every Student, male and female! May they always flourish! Long live both the republic And the one who rules it! Long live our city And the charity of benefactors That keeps us safe here!

We probably have enough Ionarts readers who can sightread to sing this in four parts: here's a .PDF file of the harmonization by Christian Wilhelm Kindleben.