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Views from the Choir Loft

PDF Download • Last Minute Holy Saturday File

Jeff Ostrowski · April 17, 2017

225 resurrection This was the last thing I created before the Easter Vigil:

* *  PDF • ALLELUIA with Laudáte (2-pages)

Eventually, I hope to create a “Musician’s Guide to Holy Saturday,” including both English and Latin, similar to what we made for Good Friday.

The 1955 rubrics say:

After the Priest’s Communion, Holy Communion is distributed, and the purification and ablutions take place as usual. For LAUDS of Easter Sunday, the following antiphon is sung.

[ Post sumptionem Sacramenti, distributio communionis, purificatio et ablutio fiunt more solito; deinde pro LAUDIBUS dominicae Resurrectionis in choro cantatur antiphona. ]

That’s actually the one place—the one place—where that famous Alleluia belongs, and could not fit more perfectly.

For the record, Psalm 116 was used on Holy Saturday prior to Pius XII:

“The use of Psalm 150 is a change from the experimental Easter Vigil (1951-1955) in which Psalm 116 was used for Lauds.” — Msgr. Frederick McManus, The New Holy Week (1956)

It’s not easy to imagine why 116 was found deficient, but Psalm 150 is also quite beautiful. And here’s a 13th-century manuscript that employs a variant “Alleluia” melody:

230 Holy Saturday ALLELUIA mode 1

The tone looks almost identical to the first mode (not the sixth) but is, in fact, Mode 6.

These ancient traditions—maintained for so many centuries with such care—make it difficult to accept the changes made by Pope Pius XII. 1 Indeed, I find it remarkable that so few speak about (or realize) what he did to the Psalter, which Pope John XXIII later reversed. Here’s the antiphon for Holy Saturday before the changes made by Pope Pius XII in 1950:

226 three women

Do you see how the artist included the holy women mentioned by the antiphon, in the most marvelous way?

Notice the strong tradition that existed for choosing GLORIA II with KYRIE I at Eastertide:

231 kyr

Indeed, the 1961 version of the Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae chooses KYRIE I for the Easter Vigil and GLORIA II on Easter Sunday. Observe, too, the 13th-century KYRIE’s avoidance of the “Teutonic dialect” at the beginning of Kyrie I. This precise question would lead to bitter fights among the members the 1904 committee, established by Pope St. Pius X to restore the Church’s authentic Gregorian chant.

 


NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   And it is truly horrifying, in light of the ancient tradition of the Church, to hear the term used by Msgr. Frederick R. McManus: “experimental Easter Vigil.”

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

Filed Under: Articles, PDF Download Last Updated: September 16, 2020

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About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

23 May 2022 • FEEDBACK

From a reader: “I wasn’t looking for it. But, I stumbled across your hand-dandy arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon. Jeff, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread! I had to play a wedding on Saturday. The bride requested the Canon. There were 11 bridesmaids! The organ loft is a football field away from the communion rail. It’s so difficult to play and keep checking the mirror. Your arrangement is absolutely genius. One can skip and choose which variations to use. The chord names are handy so that when my eyes are off the music, I always know where I am at. A thousand times thank you for sharing this arrangement!”

—Jeff Ostrowski
19 May 2022 • “Trochee Trouble”

I’m still trying to decide how to visually present the “pure” Editio Vaticana scores, using what is (technically) the official rhythm of the Church. You can download my latest attempt, for this coming Sunday. Notice the “trochee trouble” as well as the old issue of neumes before the quilisma.

—Jeff Ostrowski
16 May 2022 • Harmonized Chant?

This year’s upcoming Sacred Music Symposium will demonstrate several ways to sing the CREDO at Mass. This is because—for many parishes—to sing a full-length polyphonic CREDO by Victoria or Palestrina is out of the question. Therefore, we show options that are halfway between plainsong and polyphony. You can hear my choir rehearsing a section that sounds like harmonized plainsong.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“Ordained a diocesan priest on 7 October 1827, Guéranger was quickly named a canon (a member of the cathedral chapter of Tours). Around 1830, he demonstrated his interest in the liturgy when he began to use the Roman Missal and texts for the Divine Office, unlike many of his colleagues, who still made use of the diocesan editions commonly in use in pre-Revolutionary France.”

— Source unknown

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