...has a workhorse Alleluia with a lovely jubilus. Is that Alleluia also in the Graduale or is a new composition? I looked at every Alleluia in my Gregorian Missal, but it's not in there. Anyway, it's nice, and I'm wondering.
Many of us have wondered about the provenance of 'that' Alleluya; even those of us who have sung it most of our lives. If anyone has a clue, would he or she be kind enough to share it? It first appears in The English Gradual, ed. by our friends Palmer and Burgess. This book is the immediate predecessor of The Anglican Use Gradual, which, actually, is merely a new edition of it put into square notes and somewhat altered for the three year lectionary. I have just about concluded that our alleluya may have originated in the minds of Palmer and Burgess.
Thanks anyway for a bit of insight from the Anglo-Catholic world. It's a lovely Alleluia, all the same, and its short pedigree (compared to, say, Alleluia pascha nostrum) does not diminish its beauty and usefulness. My children's choirs sang it today for the first time at our school Mass.
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