BRIDGEPORT– Writer and author of hymn texts, Anna Bendiksen of Fairfield, has released a hymn , “Blessed Mary Ever Virgin.”
She says the hymn works for many of Our Lady’s feast days, including the upcoming solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on Friday, December 8. The hymn begins with the words, “Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Rose of Israel in full bloom; Mother to a world of sinners, Theotokos in Thy womb.”
“I wrote the text several years ago. The tune is familiar to Catholic congregations: it is ST. THOMAS (written by the 18th-century composer J.F, Wade) to which the lyrics “Tantum ergo” are usually sung. The text was inspired by an RCIA video about Mary, including the four Marian dogmas, shown to us by Deacon Toole as part of the RCIA program,” she said
Her work has been sung around the country. The Blessed Mary Ever Virgin” hymn was sung at a Catholic church in Virginia and will be sung this Friday at another Catholic church in Indiana.
In November, 2022, Bendiksen published “O Mary by Thy Fiat,” after reflecting on “how badly we need Our Lady” in a world “that is cold and spurns Thy son, our King.” The text is set to the 19th-century tune “Unde et Memores” by William H. Monk (1823-1889), an English church musician who was influenced by the Oxford Movement, in which St. John Henry Newman played a leading role. Please click here for the full piece of music.
A native of Detroit, Anna Bendiksen spent her childhood in the Midwest, learning piano, viola, and voice as a schoolgirl in Brookings, South Dakota. Having moved to Rochester, New York, she studied voice in the Preparatory Division of the Eastman School of Music and began taking Russian at Brighton High, the public high school from which she was graduated. It was at Brighton High that several great teachers inspired me to take poetry seriously both as a reader and as a writer.
She earned degrees from Bryn Mawr College (A.B. in Russian summa cum laude), where she served as director of the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Russian Choir, and Yale University (M.A., M. Phil. in Slavic Languages and Literatures). She is also trained in teaching English to speakers of other languages (certificate from Teachers College, Columbia University). A convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism, she is a Fairfield resident along with her husband and son, and member of the Parish of St. Catherine of Siena in Trumbull.
For more information about Anna Bendiksen’s sacred music compositions, visit: www.annabendiksen.com.
