Chants of the Vatican Graduale - MusicaSacra

52 Christmas Day—Third Mass
Now the melody comes exultingly: Cantdte Domino cdnticum novum—"Sing
ye to the Lord a new canticle: for He hath done wonderful
things." The wonder of wonders, the divine Child in the manger, prompts
this rejoicing. Each year He returns to us with renewed love, spins a web
of glad magic about our heart, and blesses us with new graces.
Some have thought that the numerous tristrophas in this antiphon
were intended to restrain the singer from a too violent show of joy. Be
that as it may, these tristrophas should not sound heavy or unwieldy.
The piece as a whole ought to be bright and lively. Not without reason
are we using the seventh mode (cf. the Introit for the second Sunday of
Advent and for the feast of the Ascension), which here never descends
below the tonic, but ever strives upward, although the proper dominant
of the seventh mode is prominent only in the first phrase. The accented
syllables in most instances have a higher pitch than the syllable immediately
following, frequently also higher than the preceding syllable.
K.K., 23, 134 ff.; Choralblatter, No. 2; N. Sch., 256; Revue, 8, 71
ff.; Analyses, III, 14 ff.; Wagner, III, 511.
GRADUAL (Ps. 97: 3, 2)
1. Viderunt omnes fines terrae 1. All the ends of the earth have
salutare Dei nostri: 2. jubilate Deo seen the salvation of our God: 2. sing
omnis terra, f 1. Notum fecit Do- joyfully to God all the earth, t 1.
minus salutare suum: 2. ante con- The Lord hath made known his salspectum
gentium revelavit justitiam vation: 2. he hath revealed his jussuam.
tice in the sight of the gentiles.
As in the Introit, so here again childlike naivete and lofty grandeur
combine to form a liturgical Christmas song, except that here, in accordance
with the style of a Gradual-responsory, the sublime predominates
in the melodic line as well as in the richness of the melody. The grand
beginning with Viderunt omnes already hints at this. Here the customary
limits assigned to Graduals of the fifth mode are broken. The Saviour
of the world has appeared! Effaced are the national boundaries
which separated Jew and Greek and Roman; there comes forth the Catholic
Church, the earth-encircling Church, which mediates the salvation
of God to all the world, and thus bestows a happiness upon the nations
which makes them shout aloud for very joy. Originally this Mass was
celebrated at the world-church, St. Peter's. Viderunt omnes has an echo
in omnis at the end of the corpus of the Gradual. Extremely naive is the
motive cb c a which runs through the corpus: (ter)-rae, (salutd)-re, (no)stri.
The form over terra again recalls the popular In dulci jubilo. The
frequent occurrence of the tone-sequence fac and its inversion insistent-