For years I’ve posted about this custom. This year I had pretty much forgotten about it until I was unfortunate enough to pull up a page that was live streaming the Mass from St. Peter’s in Rome and some guy was singing a different version, different melody. Why? Anyway, the main text does not really change but the intro does. It all has to do with the Moon. It’s complicated.
It was/is a custom for centuries before Mass begins to sing the Kalendas, the solemn announcement of the birth of the Savior at Prime.
Since Prime isn’t being sung in many places, and since we need to have these good customs in far greater use, sing it before Midnight Mass in the Vetus Ordo. The Novus Ordo too. Why not?
In the proclamation, the birth of Christ follows a list of important events, set points in history, which therefore puts the birth of Christ into the context of the history of salvation, beginning with the Creation of the world and culminating in the Nativity.
In the ancient world there was no standard calendar. One way to pinpoint events was to say what else was going on at the time according to other reckonings of time. The overlap of the dates would then give you the desired result, like a chronological Venn Diagram. The overlapping of the dates of the events cited in the Proclamation results in an accurate dating of the Nativity, that is 3/2 BC. There is good scholarship that reinforces 3/2 BC and cleans up a dating error for the year of Herod’s death.
The older Roman Martyrology has the notation for the Modus Ordinarius. It is rather like the “prophecy tone” and you raise the pitch at certain places.
There is a fancier rendering which is provided by Cappella Gregoriana Sanctæ Cæciliæ olim Xicatunensis. HERE
Here’s what the Kalendas sounds like more or less, if you can stand my singing.
Keep in mind there is also on Epiphany the singing of the announcement of the moveable feasts for 2023, the Noveritis, “Let y’all know”, which does change quite a bit from year to year for obvious reasons.
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Great singing Fr! Really enjoyed it.
One of the things I miss from my years in Rome is the liturgy. Now I am in a distant small place, and even with a lot of preparation, one can never do all that would be desiderable.
Merry Christmas to you fr., and to all the readers of this blog!
Very nice singing Father! Considering you haven’t heard me seeing, I think you did just fine.
*singing…. Didn’t proofread!
Merry Christmas, Fr. Z! Great singing!
Father sung this tonight at St. Mary’s in Pine Bluff, WI before Midnight Mass began. It was wonderful.
You can’t sound too bad, you got a terrific compliment. My husband thought I was listening to Topol, a wonderful Israeli actor, now deceased, whose voice was simply unforgettable.
Merry Christmas to you, Fr. Z and all here!
Made this happen in our parish, albeit with the text Pope St. John Paul II but back into the 2002 MR.
To make the event more complete, I was holding the physical Martyrlogium Romanum book while singing the English text – a detail not lost on some observant souls. It’s pretty much the only day of the year anybody will hear the tones for the liturgy of the Roman Martyrology, so might as well bring the book itself out once a year so people can see it.
Merry Christmas Father! That was quite beautiful. Its a shame that so many either do not know of such beauty or worse still, wish to destroy it.