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Views from the Choir Loft

Free Communion Propers for the Easter Season, Year C

Richard J. Clark · March 20, 2013

OMPOSING THESE SETTINGS has been a great blessing, helping me enter into prayer. I hope it will be of some help for you too.

To sing these texts is to journey from Christ’s Resurrection to the descent of the Holy Spirit. Although intellectually understood, it is still an emotional experience to realize HOW MANY ALLELUIAS are in all of the Easter propers! After abstaining from “Alleluias” throughout Lent, it is a blessed relief to sing “Alleluia” over and over again within these beautiful texts from scripture.

*This collection has been updated with seven additional settings to include Years A, B, and C.:

Free Download:
PDF • “Easter Season Communion Propers, Years ABC”
(for Schola, Organ, SATB)

• Includes ten settings from the Easter Vigil though Pentecost Sunday. Also included is a setting for the Seventh Sunday of Easter in those dioceses in which The Ascension of Our Lord is not transferred to Sunday.

• All are chant based.

• Can be sung with cantor or schola with organ. There is enormous opportunity for optional SATB singing, designed to offer contrast with unison singing.

• Optional congregation inserts for worship aids found after page 37

• Antiphon texts are English translations of those found in the Graduale Romanum. (You will find variation with the Communion propers found in the Roman Missal, especially during the Easter Season. A MUST READ article regarding Antiphons in the Roman Missal vs. the Roman Gradual is written by Jeff Ostrowski.)

These ten antiphons were composed within a twenty-four hour period, so hopefully there is some continuity among them. The antiphons should always be sung with forward, yet unhurried movement, and often with an air of lightness—not always in color but in spirit and energy. Even the intensity of the Pentecost antiphon should be sung with light forward motion, yet still unhurried (despite the “rush of a mighty wind”!).

Each antiphon colors the text simply and occasionally with symbolic gesture. For example, the Easter Vigil / Easter Sunday antiphon ends a half step below the tonic — unresolved and evoking the mystery of the empty tomb. The Pentecost antiphon uses a similar device, bookending this collection. Another example is found in the Sixth Sunday of Easter which utilizes an augmented fifth chord—three equal intervals representing the Trinity — the augmented fifth, symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, on Ascension Thursday, the final chords in both the antiphon and verses are unsupported by the root, but instead by the third providing a sense of elevated motion.

Have a blessed Holy Week!

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles, PDF Download Tagged With: Propers, Singing the Mass Last Updated: January 13, 2020

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About Richard J. Clark

Richard J. Clark is the Director of Music of the Archdiocese of Boston and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.—(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

Quick Thoughts

    Hymn by Cardinal Newman
    During the season of Septuagesima, we will be using this hymn by Cardinal Newman, which employs both Latin and English. (Readers probably know that Cardinal Newman was one of the world's experts when it comes to Lingua Latina.) The final verse contains a beautiful soprano descant. Father Louis Bouyer—famous theologian, close friend of Pope Paul VI, and architect of post-conciliar reforms—wrote thus vis-à-vis the elimination of Septuagesima: “I prefer to say nothing, or very little, about the new calendar, the handiwork of a trio of maniacs who suppressed (with no good reason) Septuagesima and the Octave of Pentecost and who scattered three quarters of the Saints higgledy-piddledy, all based on notions of their own devising!”
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Introit • Candlemas (2 February)
    “Candlemas” • Our choir sang on February 2nd, and here's a live recording of the beautiful INTROIT: Suscépimus Deus. We had very little time to rehearse, but I think it has some very nice moments. I promise that by the 8th Sunday after Pentecost it will be perfect! (That Introit is repeated on the 8th Sunday after Pentecost.) We still need to improve, but we're definitely on the right track!
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Simplified Antiphons • “Candlemas”
    Anyone who desires simplified antiphons (“psalm tone versions”) for 2 February, the Feast of the Purification—which is also known as “Candlemas” or the Feast of the Presentation—may freely download them. The texts of the antiphons are quite beautiful. From “Lumen Ad Revelatiónem Géntium” you can hear a live excerpt (Mp3). I'm not a fan of chant in octaves, but we had such limited time to rehearse, it seemed the best choice. After all, everyone should have an opportunity to learn “Lumen Ad Revelatiónem Géntium,” which summarizes Candlemas.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

Impelled by the weightiest of reasons, we are fully determined to restore Latin to its position of honor, and to do all We can to promote its study and use. The employment of Latin has recently been contested in many quarters, and many are asking what the mind of the Apostolic See is in this matter. We have therefore decided to issue the timely directives contained in this document, so as to ensure that the ancient and uninterrupted use of Latin be maintained and, where necessary, restored.”

— Pope John XXIII (22 February 1962)

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