Chants of the Vatican Gradual, by Dom Johner - Church Music ...

Second Sunday of Advent 23
phons: "Behold, the Lord cometh and all His saints with Him." When
He comes at Christmastide, the saints who have sealed the covenant
with the sacrifice of their blood will surround His cradle; St. Stephen,
St. John, the Holy Innocents. But the full grandeur of these words of
the Gradual will be realized only at the end of the world. When the
angels' trumpets will sound—some persons will perhaps hear their echo
in the notes of Congregate—then will arise both the wicked and the just,
the saints who sealed their covenant with God by sacrifice, by loyalty
to the end, frequently by a martyr's bloody death. Now they all come
to form the radiant retinue of the Saviour. However enchanting this
prospect may be, God, the eternal Sun, infinite Beauty, of whom the
saints are but reflections, will appear infinitely more glorious and resplendent.
We find the motive of species repeated over (testamentum) ejus, in
its second half over (De)-us, and in an enlarged form over the significant
ve-(niet). The repetition over (ordinave)-runt becomes more intelligible
from this motive. The melody over (Si)-on appears again over
(mani)-feste; similarly (il)-li sanctos, (te)-stamentum, and (su)-per sacri-
(ficia) sound much alike. This play of motives heightens the charm of
the whole song.
The verse has the same range as the corpus, but surpasses it in the
richness of its melismas. It begins, like the corpus, with f a c, which we
may call a resolved major chord, and then toys with the third. Here one
must distinguish well between what are only dives or bistrophas, and
the accented pressus. In any case, the form accede, which occurs
twice, must enliven the whole. In order to warn against any heaviness
in the rendition of this passage, the annotated manuscripts give a light
construction to all the neums over Congregate except the last four notes;
besides, they have "c" (—celeriter, rapidly) marked over it in two places,
the first one covering the first three thirds; and also "st" (—statim, continue
immediately). The entire passage must therefore be light and airy,
and not as if the angels had to drag the saints onto the scene. It is at the
very beginning of the verse that we find the florid melisma: possibly
this is a reference, in tone-painting, to the multitude of saints. In contrast
to the tender neums over the first word, the annotated manuscripts
demand a broad, serious, solemn rendition of Mi sanctos ejus.
The second phrase (qui ordinaverunt) is somewhat difficult to sing
properly. Here we also have an example of the small zigzag oscillations
of imitative figures with short motives peculiar to the Dutch School.
This, however, does not justify anyone in generalizing and saying that
thereby "the ideal melody, the beautiful upward and downward line of
movement, is essentially blotted out." The divisions of the melody are