Alleluia Vere tu es Rex absconditus for Holy Family (EF)
  • Royce Nickel
    Posts: 72
    Alleluia Vere tu es Rex absconditus (Liber Usualis, p. 472). Does anyone know where this melody comes from?

    For modern feasts such as Holy Family (1921), setting new propers often involved adapting an old melody to the new text. The Offertory chant of the same Mass, for example, reuses the melody from the Offertory of Midnight Mass. But in the case of this Alleluia, the melody seems to appear only once in the Graduale Romanum (1961).

    In The Chants of the Vatican Gradual, Johner describes this melody as "a jewel of plain song" (p. 86). The implication would seem that the melody is not neo-Gregorian, but from the ancient repertoire. But from what feast?
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    The Alleluia Vere tu es Rex, was also used in the older Propers for the Feast of the Holy Family (local feasts). It is in the 1910 L.U.

    N.B. The Feast of the Holy Family was fixed to the III Sunday after Epiphany. EDIT This was pre 1921.
  • Incardination
    Posts: 832
    In the EF, it is the Sunday following Epiphany (Saturday if Epiphany, itself, is on a Sunday).
  • Royce Nickel
    Posts: 72
    Thank you, tomjaw, for clarifying that Holy Family was a local feast before it became a universal feast in 1921. But it wasn't a mediaeval feast. Devotion to the Holy Family appears to have emerged in more recent centuries. So any idea of the source of the melody?
  • Royce Nickel
    Posts: 72
    There are three possibilities: a) the melody for Vere tu es Rex is neo-Gregorian, b) the melody already existed with a different text and was adapted, c) the Alleluia Vere tu es Rex was a mediaeval composition for a feast which is either no longer in our calendar or for which other propers are now used.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    Gueranger says the local feast was approved by Leo XIII in 1893. The devotion c.1663.

    Will see if I can do a search...
    Global chant database does not have anything...
    Cantus has not been helpful
    It does not appear in the Sarum books as far I have been able to check.

    Johner is interesting in that he gives much more information about the other Propers, has any of the modern chant books got information about the Propers in the back?
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