I think it's just you! Since my congregation, choir and Rector sing this easily every year, it is clearly not impossible to sing. In fact, in my opinion, it is simple and intuitive. FYI, I introduce it like all hymns, with intro followed by full hymn verse plus 'refrain' so that anyone not already familiar with it has heard the hymn melody follow the intro.

I'm at a loss to know what is being referenced here. The only 'On This Day' I know is Holst's arrangement of translated Personent hodie. - and there is nothing confusing about the brief intro.

Well, I see that it's a perfectly nice tune, Gott sei dank, with a text translated from the Latin. What is the confusion?

Adam,

Do you mean that what confuses choirs (or anyone) is that the organ's descending line starts on the off beat, or that some incompetent organist plays it trochaically?

i mean i have never heard it played in a way that makes it clear enough when to breathe, so everyone misses the entrance. beat one before the descending line is obscured, so it becomes difficult to know where in the measure you are.

here is a perfect example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk587NNv40s

the descending line has nothing on the upbeat, and isn't strictly in time with what comes before. So it SOUNDS like a downbeat. And if you listen, at least half the people singing don't come in for a word or two

Whenever weird stuff like this happens with hymns, I just make editorial edits. Hate that line? Play something else in it’s place that is clearer. Sometimes we get too stuck to the notes. Big rep in concert is one thing; hymns are another.

Do you have to use THIS hymn? I’ve never heard it before, but it seems to be a weak hymn structurally on my first listen.

I am astounded. I've done this for decades and never had the slightest problem, whether with choir or congregation. It used to be in one of the Lutheran hymnal supplements, and, I believe, in The Hymnal 1982. I have had several congregations who really liked it and easily got into the spirit of it - intro and all. I don't see what is problematic (for some) about it.

Nor would it ever have occurred to me to substitute something else for Holst's intro. If you don't like what Holst did do someones else's arrangement, or write your own - don't savage someone else's composition because it is thought to be too challenging or in need of editing here and there (it isn't).

It's really so simple - you have a descending scale and you enter on the bottom note. That's the easy way to gauge when to enter. When doing or teaching this I have never had anyone show perplexion or bewilderment. I don't doubt that you are having the problems that you say you are having (otherwise this thread would not exist!), but I just can't imagine why. Try counting 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-On this day... (or per-so-nent...). The beauty of Holst's work here lies precisely in its exciting rhythmic sleight of hand and the unexpected propulsion from a weak beat.
Good luck - let us know how this turns out.
This, especially Holst's arrangement of it, has long been one of my favourite carols.
Thanks for creating a discussion about it.

I think MJO works...

I have, indeed, been blessed to work with a number of 'very musically literate people', professional and semi-professional choirs, and have done Personent with some quite good groups. But, I have also done it many times with ordinary volunteer choirs and ordinary congregations, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Catholic. This carol has a rhythmic drive and excitement that propel it along, so much so that people are caught up in the spirit of it and simply carry on from the intro by osmosis - they may or may not grasp it theoretically, but they do just 'get it', 'pick up on it', are carried away with it. Though congregations do very much enjoy singing this, often with surprising unity and rhythmic clarity, one must admit that it has more gusto, buoyancy, and cleanliness with just a choir.

Compare it to the pedal solo opening BWV 532 - if you don't show that it begins on an off-beat, the entire passage sounds strange, but after establishing the sense of beat the listener "gets it" after the first measure. Some recordings of the Holst that I listened to online did not make this distinction (all beats sound the same) which indeed creates this confusion (we have no way of orienting ourselves within the measure) If the organist establishes the hierarchy of beats in the first measure and properly shows the first note as an off-beat, it becomes trivial to understand as a singer.

Do you "breathe" before the entrance?

No! I make a bit of a conductor type gesture accompanied with a string player's 'sniff' to mark the first beat (rest) so no one in the choir can mistake what the rhythm/meter are, and then let it rip! (Also an accent on the second beat—feeling it 'in 2'— by creating a small separation before the second played quarter note, so I am phrasing somewhat differently than Mr. Giffen.)

"On this day...
O beautiful mother."

Oops.

Another rather good setting of this text, by Haldane Campbell Stewart, may be heard by googling 'carols by candlelight magdalen youtube'. The recording was made just last month, and features the choir of men and boys at Magdalen College, Oxford. They are excellent!

Also in this virus-adapted lessons and carols are two haunting presentations - Jean Mouton's Nesciens Mater and John Sheppard's Verbum caro. Regrettably, neither of these extended works is heard very often.

Congregations led by choirs can get it right.