The Word Descends Incarnate - Christmas Vigil - Digital Advent Calendar 2021

Advent has prepared us, offered hints and glimpses of the arrival of our Saviour -- and now the moment is imminent. Hodie, today; mane, the morning: words which repeat often on Christmas Eve, including in the Introit to the Vigil Mass.
Hodie scietis quia véniet Dóminus, et salvábit nos:
et mane vidébitis glóriam ejus.
Today you shall know that the Lord will come and save us:
And in the morning you shall see His glory.
We keep vigil for the morning and the birth of the child. “Today” means not some future utopia, the arrival of some heaven on earth, but really today. Today in our normal daily lives, with their pains, regrets, sadnesses and challenges. The morning will come, and with it hope. Hope of eternal life and of happiness in knowing -- in person, in the flesh -- the glory of God.
Today is the lowering of the Word of God, of the second person of the Trinity, into human nature. This was wonderfully made audible in the Offertory:
Tollite portas, príncipes, vestras:
et elevámini, portæ æternáles,
et introíbit Rex glóriæ.
Lift up your gates, you princes,
and be lifted up, eternal gates.
And the King of Glory shall enter.
We at Neumz have the great benefit of working with Dominique Crochu, an expert in medieval paleography: in this video he offers a discovery that we are very pleased to share with you.
The Gregorian melody illustrates God’s glory in the high register. What is interesting is that, after a careful analysis of dozens of manuscripts of this chant, it seems that the melody given at the very end of current editions has been transmitted to us inexactly. As Dom Guilmard was suggesting in yesterday’s video, unfortunately things can be lost on the one hand while gained on the other in successive generations’ attempts at fixing music in ever more determinate notation systems. In this case it seems that the original melody was eroded, that a step down was lost, and thus the ending results a whole tone higher than it would have been in the original 8th-century chant.
This descent into the lower register might strike us as strange, after extolling the glory of the King in the high register, but it is exactly the lowering of that glory into human nature that we celebrate today. In the video, the audio recording of the Sisters has been digitally modified to demonstrate what this sounds like.
With the birth of Jesus, the Word is now incarnate, and God lives among us. “Revelabitur Gloria Domini”, the glory of God is revealed to all flesh, says today’s Communion. Dominique recalls that Moses stated that no one can approach God without dying. But it must now be understood in another way: no one can approach God without dying to himself, that is to say to be in a state of humility, just like Him.
God has offered our salvation. Now it is up to us to accept, and we pray, in the words of the Secret (the prayer over the offerings) of the Christmas Vigil Mass, that:
In illius inveniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia.
We may be found in the likeness of Christ, in whom our nature is united to You.
Dominique Crochu is responsible for the preparation of all of the scores in the app, as well as much of the complicated process of arranging all of the materials we have collected into the proper order for the liturgy. His contribution to this project has been more than any single other person. He is a medievalist, fellow liturgical connoisseur and co-director of the Musique Médiévale network. He began working with the monks of Solesmes in 1980, where he learnt semiology at the Musical Paleography Workshop. He soon specialised in unpublished Old Font Gregorian repertory, especially the Office of Matins. His research has brought about a decisive advance concerning the very delicate problem of the interpretation of the B-flat in Gregorian chant. He has collaborated, since 2005, with Dominique Gatté, director of Musicologie Médiévale. Between them, they have listed more than 8000 manuscripts and printed sources, from the fifth to the 18th century. He also worked with Alberto Diaz-Blanco to digitalise and restore more than 1000 vinyl, shellac and magnetic recordings of Gregorian chant.
Listen to the gradual “Hodie scietis” in the app: odra.dk/hodie
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We are pleased to offer the Neumz Digital Advent Calendar to celebrate one year of the Neumz mobile apps for Android and iOS. Each day we will offer you a commentary on a chant sung during Advent or a reflection on Gregorian chant, in the hope that you will enjoy these chants as much as we did while preparing them to share them with you all. Subscribe to our TH-cam channel to celebrate Advent together!

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Merci Dominique 👍🌲✝️💜🙏💒

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❤