Chants of the Vatican Graduale - MusicaSacra

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost 285
fae admitted that the well-marked cadence on the tonic over tui is not
so happy. The text here allows no marked pause. After the first pause
over tui a sort of sequence of thirds begins, which was still more emphasized
in earlier times, since after the pause not a doubled c of the
same pitch was sung, but a lower note, most likely b c, as the graphic
representation of the neums seems to demand. Thus the original sequence
of notes would be b c a g, a b\> g /, g a f d. The conclusion of aequitatem
also occurs on the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, on Friday
of the Ember Week in Lent, on Sexagesima Sunday, and in the Gradual
Sacer dotes.
ALLELUIA VERSE (Ps. 64: 2)
1. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in 1. A hymn, 0 God, becometh thee
Sion: 2. et tibi reddetur votum in in Sion: 2. and a vow shall be paid
Jerusalem. to thee in Jerusalem.
We are well acquainted with these words from the psalm-verse of
the Introit Requiem; here in the Alleluia-verse, however, they must receive
a more brilliant and livelier interpretation than in the funeral
Mass. But even there no gloomy rendition should disfigure them. Here
we have a song of praise, a grateful paying of vows, witnesses of just so
many favors granted. The choice of the lively seventh mode and what
has the effect of a bright major chord in alleluia is most happy. A correspondence
exists between the endings of the second and third members
of the jubilus. Te decet hymnus is chanted with emphasis on the
accented syllables. From the standpoint of melody, we have two phrases,
of which the first extends as far as votum, building on the psalm-melody
of the seventh mode to the middle cadence inclusive. This appears again,
more richly developed, over Sion and is repeated over votum. The incisions
over Deus and reddetur resemble a fiexa. Over Jerusalem the
closing melisma is particularly ornate. Here not only the jubilus of alleluia
is repeated, but we find numerous neums interpolated before it,
which usually prolong the upper note of the fourths c-f into a tristropha
or a pressus. It is not easy for the singer to live himself into these melismas.
They are foreign to our feelings and cannot readily be developed
and for this reason they demand a limpid, fluent presentation. Perhaps
this ornate melody already foreshadows the idea which was formulated
in the later Middle Ages by Bishop Sicard of Cremona (-*-1215) in his
work entitled Mitrale (Migne, P. L., 213, 394): "Almost in every instance
when the word 'Jerusalem' occurs in* a song, long neums are attached
to it, in order to give a picture of the exultation of the heavenly
Jerusalem."