Alleluia at Easter Vigil
  • I would like to know what others are doing for the Alleluia at the Vigil. The new 2012 rite calls for a more complex one with key changes and 3 different verses. If anyone has some ideas or suggestions, I would appreciate hearing from you.
  • Actually, that is merely a return to the older tradition. I'm sure the publishers have come up with accompaniments. N.B. If it uses the Tone VI "Alleluia" refrain, be sure to chant the verses to Tone VI Psalm tone; and if the longer, single "Alleluia" which is Tone VIII, be sure to use the Tone VIII Psalm tone. No, I do not trust our "Catholic" publishing companies to get this right!
  • fcbfcb
    Posts: 331
    The Graduale Simplex offers one that is the same melody as the Easter Dismissal, sung on three successively higher pitches. It's an interesting idea, though I've never heard it used.
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • We have used the Graduale Simplex adaptation of the Easter Dismissal as the Alleluia Psalm refrain for four years running, cantor intoned.
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • I've used the attached PDF before and I've also done the solemn tone VIII from the Missal sung thrice as in the second PDF then chanted Psalm 118 to tone VIII and repeated the final Alleluia. GIA does have something similar found here
    Thanked by 1themindfulyokel
  • Heath
    Posts: 934
    This is the setting we use . . . quite well-done.

    http://www.canticanova.com/catalog/products/e_vig_gosp_proc.htm
    Thanked by 1RomanticStrings
  • JonLaird
    Posts: 242
    We do the one indicated, the verse from the Graduale Romanum. In the past few years I have intoned it myself to ensure the modulation is correct (it's actually rather straightforward). The first year we did it, it was a lot of work getting the non-Schola singers to learn it, but they did, and they all love it. Now it is relatively easy to recall each year (a small part of one rehearsal). I highly recommend it as the best possible way to bring back Alleluia after a long Lent and introduce the Resurrection Gospel.

    But make sure your pastor knows what is going on before you do it.

    (By the way, we print the neumes, and many people are singing it by the third and fourth times)
  • quilisma
    Posts: 136
    In my old parish we always sung the authentic tone because it happened to be the one in our psalm books 'Psalms for Sundays' (publ. Mayhew, if I remember correctly). It was only later, when I came to know the Gregorian repertoire better, that I realised that it was THE tone. Of course, we didn't do the modulating bit but the congregation did join in.

    For me, this Alleluia is THE Paschal alleluia and not the mode VI one proposed for the communion antiphon, which is often touted as such.

    Now I live in France and my parish tends to use a version of the Exsultet by Gouzes. Irritatingly (for me), this version contains Alleluia refrains meaning that the Alleluia after the Epistle is not the actually first one after the Lenten respite. I have grumbled about this but no one seems to take any notice - they don't really appreciate 'tradition'.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Does anyone have the verses for this pointed in English for Mode VIII?
  • Whence the fashionable practice of singing triple alleluyas all the whole year 'round?
    Unless I am incognizant of some arcane and provincial custom, the only time for three alleluyas is at the Easter Vigil. Long, yea, since shortly after the recent council, have I thought that singing multiple alleluyas every Sunday really spoiled the specialness of doing so on Easter Even, and, that it was a quite certain signifer of liturgical illiteracy, if not outright ecclesiastical ignorance. To make matters even worse, the ones sung in most places have all the indignity of hippety hoppety, catchy little dances. No one seems to be remotely aware of the profundity of this Hebrew utterance, certainly not of the fact that the last syllable is a shortened form of God's Name, Ya(weh). As we sing AlleluYa, Praise to Yaweh, we should do so with deep inner conviction and awe, not the shallow and thoughtless fa-la-la skip-to-ma-loo rubish that is tossed off in most places. The only really appropriate way to sing Alleluya is with an ecstatic jubilus on the final syllable. Don't tell me that our highly educated and technologically advanced people of the XXIst century can't learn to do this. They can, and their choirmasters should insist that they do so. At Walsingham we use the version in the Anglican Use Gradual all the time except Easter Even, when we sing The Triple Alleluya.
    Thanked by 1CGM
  • donr
    Posts: 971
    We use the triple Alleluia found in the Liber which I am assuming is the same as the Graduale. Adam Bartlett has a very nice version here starting on page 11 at Illuminare publications.
    Our pastor intones the Alleluia and the choir will sing the verses.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Here it is from the NOH with added English pointed verse using psalm tone.