Complete abstention from "alleluia"
  • trentonjconn
    Posts: 786
    Obviously in the West during Lent (and the 'gesimas) we abstain from liturgical use of "alleluia". What are your experiences of the degree to which this liturgical abstention leaks into everyday life? Do any of you belong to parishes where the practice is to utterly abstain from any utterance of the word at all in any context? What do rehearsals for Easter during these seasons look like if so? Is there any long-standing tradition of the laity utterly and completely abstaining from "alleluia"? I've been curious about what this looks like in the wider parish, as well as the historical, context for some time now, and it seems an appropriate time of year to ask.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,337
    I immediately roll my eyes at the people who get scrupulous about it during Lent when we rehearse music for Holy Saturday and beyond, and we practice appropriately. The removal is liturgical, and it may be uttered outside of antiphons and the propers. When Easter falls in its somewhat typical range, the word is found of Prime of April 4 at the Marytrology, and it is always said in Lent in a reading of the second nocturn of Matins, on the feast of Saint Gregory.

    Now, the Je vous salue, Marie, comblée de grâce sung by the French including trads is a problem. It’s not really liturgical but it feels off. Some people substitute Ainsi soit-il and you even had both during the Notre-Dame fire.

    For “In his temple now behold him” I subbed Alleluia for a repetition of the matching part of the preceding verse (working from the text in Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Canticles).
  • FSSPmusic
    Posts: 457
    it may be uttered outside of antiphons and the propers. When Easter falls in its somewhat typical range, the word is found of Prime of April 4 at the Marytrology, and it is always said in Lent in a reading of the second nocturn of Matins, on the feast of Saint Gregory.
    Good points! A general avoidance of alleluia in the context of motets and hymns, either from Septuagesima or during Lent, is noted in any number of handbooks and commentaries, but I'm not sure I've seen any official rubric or regulation forbidding the use of motets or hymns with alleluia, which leads me to wonder whether it's a tradition so well known that it didn't need to be documented, or whether there is indeed no such prohibition regarding supplementary texts sung in the liturgy. To the OP, I find it a bit silly when choirs substitute something else in rehearsal to avoid uttering the forbidden word, but as long as they don't take it too seriously in a way that tends toward scrupulosity, I see no harm in it.
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