The NOH has some melodic variations. The Solesmes publication set their variant as "the" melodic version, for many of us at least (I discovered a different variant from Mr. Christoph Dalitz), but at least a dozen or so versions with tiny melodic differences could be counted across the centuries. I stumbled across these in my study of the Salve Festa Dies this year.
On the NOH version, notice how the initial note is raised from Mi to Fa. This is because of sub-semitonal shifting (we see it a ton throughout the chant repertoire). Then on the second syllable of "festa" the NOH omits the Mi, which is simply a passing note. I think the majority of sources do omit it (although I like it, it adds a bit of extra flavor).
You can see the sources that I've collected in this folder here.
The conclusion that I reached in my study is that the music of the Salve Festa Dies follows the rhythm/meter/durations of the text when read according to the classical Latin syllable quantities. The text is in Elegiac meter.
It may be interpreted something like this. I'm currently cramming to get all twenty one verses typeset in MuseScore before we sing it tomorrow!
Lol… thank you OMagnum…. It never ceases to amaze me - the amount of scholarly work that resides on this forum and in the CMAA. We’re doing this for offertory tonight.
Yes, thank you Tomjaw. I should have specified, all twenty one verses that we will sing, not all the verses of the hymn! I had been using your PDF of the chant (Gueranger's text) as a reference, which is why I stopped at twenty one. Thank you for all the wonderful resources on the St. Bede site! In the future I may also use some of the parodies that were written for other feasts. I've attached my twenty one verse version. Happy Easter to all!
(I know there is some fine tuning that needs doing for the text on the congregation's sheet, that will have to be a job for next year).
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