"Amen Alleluia" outside of Easter
  • mlabelle
    Posts: 46
    My seminarian friend and I are starting to introduce a simple entrance antiphon chant at daily Mass this summer. He and I disagree about the "Gloria Patri" between antiphons, though.

    He claims that we should end the "Gloria Patri" with "Amen Alleluia" in every season except Advent and Lent, mostly because that's how he says the Liturgy of the Hours works. I think he said something about the Mass always celebrating the Resurrection, too.

    I have sung at an EF Mass on and off for about 2.5 years, and we never concluded "Gloria Patri" with an alleluia except during Easter. To do it any other way would seem to contradict tradition in my opinion.

    Do you know of any relevant documents I could cite? Is there a post-Vatican II directive (perhaps one of the instructions on "Sacrosanctum Concilium") that would indicate one way or the other? Or would it be sufficient just to mention the tradition?
  • WJA
    Posts: 237
    The Gloria Patri concludes with "Amen. Alleluia" in the modern Liturgy of the Hours, but not in the Mass. In support of this, I would cite the 1974 Graduale Romanum, which was promulgated for the Novus Ordo, which does not include "Amen. Alleluia" in its Gloria Patri formulas for introits.
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    Ending the Gloria Patri with Amen Alleluia is something that is only done after the Deus in adiutorium, at the beginning of Office hours (outside Lent in the Ordinary Form, outside Lent and Pre-Lent in the Extraordinary Form). There has never been, to the best of my knowledge, any Amen Alleluia at the Mass. Even during Eastertide, the Alleluias always found in the Introit antiphon are not placed at the beginning (*), which means that after «saeculorum. Amen.» you don't start with an Alleluia right away.

    I don't know about any document saying specifically «don't do this», but, well, just check any liturgical book you like, in particular the (EF) Missal and any edition of the Gradual (EF or OF, including the Graduale Simplex), and you won't find that there. It's just not the way things are done.

    After all, you just can't have every single strange idea someone somewhere comes up with spelled out in full in some instruction as being forbidden...

    (*) Introits composed for Eastertide have an Alleluia in the middle (sometimes more than once) and two or three at the end. Others get a couple of Alleluias stuck at the end according to one of eight fixed melodies, depending on the tonality.
  • WJA
    Posts: 237
    What dvalerio said.

    I should have been clearer that the Amen Alleluia follows the Gloria Patri in the Deus in adiutorium, not the Gloria Patri at the conclusion of the psalms.
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