Chants of the Vatican Graduale - MusicaSacra

The Dedication of a Church 487
The corpus is quiet and serene. Actually it has a range of only a
fifth. Once the melody goes below the tonic, and once it ascends above
the dominant. Inaestimdbile is modeled on admirdbile of the ninth Sunday
after Pentecost. Over sacramentum fgdgfg becomes gabaga. The resolved
descending major chord occurs three times.
The verse exhibits great development. Its florid melisma over
(cho)-rus is easily recognized; suffice it to mention only Maundy Thursday.
The entire second phrase, text and melody, is taken from the second
Gradual for the Ember Saturday of Lent.
God appears surrounded by His celestial court. In some churches
the mural decorations depicted the choirs of angels. The thousands and
tens of thousands of angels pay Him homage and are happy in His presence,
all their desires being fully realized. We, on the contrary, have
many things to ask for and to lament over: we must cry: exdudi—"hear
our petitions!" And no matter how many or how great they may be, we
may bring them all. Today, however, we will above all—Imprimis—
pray for the Church, that God may protect, unite, govern, and preserve
her in peace.over the entire earth. We will pray that our souls also,
created and redeemed by God, and sanctified through the sacraments,
may ever retain their dignity as temples of God and ever strive after
greater holiness. Only then can we hope that our prayers will be acceptable
to God and worthy of being heard. Here it will be opportune to ask
ourselves: What must be my attitude in choir so that I may measure
up to the standard of the choirs of angels?
ALLELUIA VERSE (Ps. 137: 2)
1. Adorabo ad templum sanctum 1. / will worship towards thy
tuum: 2. et confitebor nomini tuo. holy temple, 2. and I will give
glory to thy name.
The beginning of this Alleluia shows some resemblance to that of
the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. On the syllable -ia a torculus
and then a pressus should be sung. The close of the verse has only the
torculus of the second member and the last eight notes of the jubilus.
According to Wagner 1 this Alleluia marks approximately the division
between the archaic (Gregorian) and the classic (post-Gregorian) type of
Alleluia. Indeed, he says that there is only wanting "the agreement of
the coda of the verse with the jubilus and its symmetrical construction
and brilliant melody," but that it shows a great step forward in comparison
with the type portrayed in the three Christmas Masses.
i ill, 402 f.