Chant Comment
Alleluia for Easter Monday ( Graduale Romanum p 201 )
Alleluia! An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. (Matthew 28:2).
ALLELUIA! The word unheard for the six weeks of Lent, suddenly makes its victorious return on Easter night, with a luxuriance which invades every available space in the liturgy. The word, which in Hebrew means “Praise the Lord,” has been sung for at least 3000 years, first by the ancient Israelites, then by Jesus and Christians alike. That word has given rise to some of the most exuberant musical creativity in the Church’s liturgy.
It is associated with two particular moments or seasons: the solemn proclamation of the Gospel, during Mass, and the seven-week paschal season from Easter to Pentecost, where its proliferation expresses the uncontained joy and gratitude following Our Lord’s resurrection. In the Gregorian Chant tradition, the Gospel Alleluias always end with a jubilus (or “melisma“- song without words), a technique of singing known and greatly loved by St Augustine of Hippo: “Sing to Him a new song. We all ask how to sing to God. See, He teaches you himself: don’t look for words. . .Sing with cries of jubilation. How? Understand that words cannot communicate the song of the heart. When harvesters brim over with joy so that they can no longer express it in words, they abandon words and break out into shouts of jubilation. Let your heart rejoice without words and your boundless joy be unshackled by syllables. Sing to him with cries of jubilation.” [1] This jubilus invariably finds its place on the last syllable –ia, which is the abbreviated version of the ineffable divine name. As we find ourselves at a loss for words, we let the music take over, in a kind of musical ecstasy.
(In the golden age of chant, the jubilus was frequently an opening for improvisation on the part of the cantor, much like the cadenza of modern classical music. For this reason, there is considerable variation in the manuscript signs from one source to another.)
[1] Enarratio on Psalm 32
The opening words of Matthew’s account relating the first announcement of the resurrection make up the verse of this Alleluia, sung on Easter Monday. The excitement and overwhelming emotions of Easter Sunday have subsided; a certain quiet ensues. With the women who had first visited the tomb on the previous day and first received the news of Christ’s resurrection, we relive in our minds that ineffable moment.
Unlike the emotionally highly charged Alleluia of Easter Day this one has the greater calm and stability of the 8th mode, radiating a happiness which is both simple and rich. The 8th mode has its source in Soh (here middle space on the staff) which acts as a foundational note (notice its appropriateness on sedebat super eum). Its association with the upper Doh (top line) is what constitutes its basic structure and the modal quality of the 8th mode (e.g. descendit) with special emphasis on Ti natural (top space) as the note that carries the melody up to Doh. When the 8th mode develops its full expressive potential, it reflects its upper fourth (Soh-Doh) in a lower fourth Soh-Re (e.g. et sedebat) with a frequent weaving of the lower Doh around the Re.
Typically for pieces that belong to the later part of the golden age of composition, the melody of the verse is an elaboration of the Alleluia melody and closes with a repetition of the jubilus. The charm of this chant lies especially in the descriptive quality of the melody: the graceful descending flight of the descendit; its upward mirror-image in the ascent of accedens, the comfortably established quality of et sedebat super eum, and above all, the lively rotating triplets of revolvit, suggesting the stone being rolled away.
The two principal medieval manuscript versions (manuscripts of Laon and St Gall) do not entirely tally. This is because Alleluias were the chants that left the greatest scope for improvisation, creating different local versions. It is Laon that, in the Alleluia, gives us the successive rapidly descending torculus groups that are so evocative. But both Laon and St Gall agree on a broad and majestic ascent on the –le of the Alleluia and again at repeated intervals during the verse, while St Gall envisaged the angel as floating gracefully down in an unhurried way on descendit.
