Easter Vigil

7 April 2011

Procession	The Lord is my light (Taizé)
Exsultet	Missal
Psalm 103	Send forth your spirit (mtgf)
Psalm 15	Preserve me, God (Christopher Walker)
Exodus 15	I will sing to the Lord (mtgf)
Psalm 29	I will praise you, Lord (Paul Inwood)
Psalm 41-42	As the deer longs (Palestrina/Bridge)
Gloria	Wisdom (Steven Janco)
Gospel Acclamation	Celtic (O'Carroll/Walker)
Liturgy of the Baptism	Litany of the Saints (Missal)
	Acclamation after Blessing of Water (mtgf)
	Sprinkling: Amen, Amen (mtgf)
Preparation of Gifts	For peace (Antoine Oomen)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Wisdom (Steven Janco)
Lamb of God	Wisdom (Steven Janco)
Communion	Sicut Cervus (Palestrina)
Final	Christ be our light (Bernadette Farrell)

When doing some sessions on the Triduum earlier this year I was interested that there was, it seemed, universal reaction of surprise to the rubric that the lights go on in the church before the Exsultet. A rubric which was unchanged since the previous edition. There was a general feeling that the Exsultet made best sense when the light of the Paschal Candle was seen to effective. Perhaps a gentler understanding of this rubric would be that the light increases (it doesn't say all the lights). I have much sympathy with this - that we may appreciate the light better if we stand back from our electrical ability to flood the place with light. The only disadvantage was that if you are singing the Exsultet and you manage to blow your own candle out and there is not enough ambient light to actually see the text. I was aware that the previous text was one which I had heard over the years before I sang it and so it had a familiarity which of course the new translation did not. On the whole I enjoyed the new translation, as a rule it sings better than it looks. I also enjoyed the workout of the Missal tone - I sang it to what my mind now is 'Glenstal style', that is a fair pace and seeing melismas more as decorations. I used the Easter Proclamation to proclaim from. As should be the case my views about the publication were influenced by using it in practice. First of all it is a beautiful ritual edition with sumptuous icons throughout. I think it be a great resource for mystagogy. Yes, there are a fair number of page turns but the majority of the chant being a few lines at the bottom of the page was less a problem than I thought as that is where it was easiest to read it. Indeed I would happily use it again which I did not expect to be the case. It uses ICEL's setting of the chant. I do wish that this was broken up into paragraphs with the text (i.e. a line break and shorter line before each new paragraph) it would make reading the text and therefore singing considerably easier. I can remember at one stage there was a proposal that the music should follow the sense lines of the text - for the setter a complicated task but I do wonder if it would help the singer or does the eye work differently when a text is read?

Many years ago I had a parish priest who said at the end of every Easter Vigil this will only really make sense when we have a baptism let us hope next year we will. This year we had an adult baptism at St Mary's and it was that difference between what you know and experiencing anew what you know. To give one example I was struck how the psalm responses can be seen as forming a dialogue between the Church and the Elect preparing for baptism.

For communio we sang Palestrina's Sicut Cervus I wonder how many of the congregation recognised the link with psalm response sung earlier.