Does anyone know the name of Chant used as introit of the Introit proper of the Mass?
  • Rick
    Posts: 1
    Hello,
    I was wondering if anyone knows how the chant piece that might be sung before the Introit (as a prelude to it) is call. I am not referring to a hymn, rather there are specific pieces that could be sung in high Solemnities as for example Christmas day and Easter Sunday. To my knowledge this is very little known and so very little sung but it has important significance for the particular feast. I believe there is even a book with these compositions but I can't remember more details.
    Thanks in advance.
    God bless!
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,939
    Do you mean the the Asperges/ Vidi aquam at the principal Mass?
  • CatherineS
    Posts: 690
    My schola director used to use chants (I think they were from the Processionale Monasticum) as 'entrance chants', because we wouldn't sing the Introit until later. He would choose ones relevant to the season and we would sing the same one each Sunday until there was a change of feast, season, etc.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,703
    You could be talking about 2 different things, a Processional Hymn, for Easter it would be Salve Festa Dies, other processional hymns are also fixed Liturgically and were found in Processionale.
    The other option is a Trope... discussed here,
    https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/15171/are-troped-ordinaries-permitted-in-the-ef/p1
    They are listed in Vol. 49 of the Analecta Hymnica
    Tropi Graduales. Tropen des Missale im Mittelalter. II. Tropen zum Proprium Missae. Aus handschriftlichen Quellen herausgegeben von C. Blume

    pp. 5-14 Vorwort
    pp. 15-164 I. Tropi ad Introitum
  • Arthur Connick
    Posts: 494
    The pieces you are thinking of fall under the category of "processional chants" since they are sung as the choir processes into the church before Mass (either with, or seperately from, the sacred ministers). The associated texts are local usages and not in the Roman Missal. Various types of chants are employed - responsories, sequences (proses), antiphons with verses and hymns. 20th c. authorized books exist - see for example Supplément au Propre de Coutances et Avranches, 1928. If you want to refer specifically to such a chant in a program of some sort, the correct term would be "at the procession".
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
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