93: A Musical Overview of the Easter Vigil

 The Saturday immediately before Easter—more precisely, the time that day after nightfall—is one of the richest musical days in the whole Catholic liturgical tradition. The Mass of that night, which cannot begin until after night has fallen (here in Atlanta, that’s often 8:00 or 8:30, but in some places, even though night falls much earlier, it doesn’t begin until 10:00 or even later) contains more sung parts than almost any other Mass.

First, there is the plain-chanting of “The Light of Christ” as the deacon carries ina. 2-plus-foot, several-inches-wide candle made of beeswax. (This fact will soon become important.) To this, which happens at 3 points throughout the procession into the church, the congregation responds, in similar plain-chant, “Thanks be to God.”

Then, for the only time the whole year, as the church remains otherwise in total darkness (except from the aforementioned very large beeswax candle), someone (most commonly a deacon) sings a roughly 12-minute chant. (A dear [lay] friend once tweeted about this in advance of her singing it and called it “getting up and singing about honeybees and sin for nine minutes”—and that’s a pretty good description, honestly. This was right after I followed her, about a year before she followed me back. I knew immediately we’d be wonderful friends. If you’re reading this, hi Lizzy!) Here is that chant, sung in perfect Latin by then-Deacon, now-Bishop, Erik Varden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kym7UbUDdyc&list=RDkym7UbUDdyc&start_radio=1)

Not just because of its length, this chant is notorious among cantors as being incredibly difficult. The chant must be performed entirely a capella, i.e., without any harmony, help from other singers, or any instrumental accompaniment whatsoever. It’s also full of written-out ornamentation and very long phrases (see for example “Therefore, dearest friends, standing in the awesome glory of this holy light, invoke with me, I ask you, the mercy of God almighty, that he, who has been pleased to number me, though unworthy, among the Levites, may pour into me his light unshadowed, that I may sing this candle's perfect praises.”). All this makes it very difficult, if you don’t have extensive vocal training to keep your tone and volume consistent, and, of course, to not lose your initial pitch center, drifting as the chant goes on. There is yet another complication: by the end of the Exsultet, you’re probably 15 minutes into a 2.5-to-4-hour Mass, so you need to be in good enough form to not be tired at all by it because there’s a lot more singing to come.

A typical Sunday Mass (or a Mass late enough on Saturday to count as if it were a Sunday Mass) has a first reading, a responsorial psalm, a second reading, a Gospel acclamation, and a Gospel reading. The Easter Vigil is no ordinary Mass. Instead, for the only time the whole year (that will become a common refrain), there are at minimum four, and at maximum seven, readings from Scripture. Each is followed by a Psalm and a spoken (or chanted) prayer: reading, Psalm, prayer; reading, Psalm, prayer; reading, Pslam, prayer; and so on.

After four readings’ worth of this cycle, we briefly pause, and, for the first time since Lent began, we sing the Gloria (“Glory to God in the highest, and peace to people of good will…”). But there’s more— because of the joyful solemnity of the occasion, this Gloria, exceptionally, is accompanied by the constant ringing of bells throughout. This, of course, is another musica challenge: having done the Exsultet and some Psalms already—knowing how much more still lies ahead—singing through and above the ringing of bells. (Here, though, the prohibition on support from other instruments or voice parts is lifted.)

For the entirety of Lent, the Gospel acclamation has been “Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory” or something similar—not “Alleluia”. For the first time since the day before Ash Wednesday, about a month and a half ago, now that Lent is over, we once again sing “Alleluia.” The first “Alleluia” since the beginning of Lent—in the old rite, before Vatican II in the 1960s, a plank with the word “Alleluia” would literally be buried on church premises the night before Lent began—is often, more than usual, since it’s been gone so long, one in which we pull out all the musical stops. The Alleluia, just as was the case with the Gloria, is accompanied by the ringing of bells throughout, and so poses some of the same challenges to the singers.

The Easter Vigil is the Mass during which adults who were previously Christians but of another denomination or non-Christians, who wish to enter the Church, actually do so. A common feature of this rite is the singing of something quite novel: the Litany of the Saints (which usually appears here, or at the ordinations of new deacons, priests, and bishops). This is not particularly exhausting, except on the grounds that there’s been so much before it and will be so much after it. Something else about its structure helps singers: that it’s inherently antiphonal, i.e., call-and-response, with the congregation: the cantor sings “Saint [name]” and the congregation responds, “pray for us.” Never underestimate, for both the choir and the people, how much the respite of having the other sing the next antiphonal part can be helpful to keep the voices going—every little break helps, with as much music as we have in this liturgy.

There have so far been three of four parts in the Easter Vigil: the initial Service of Light (which included the blessing of an outdoor bonfire, from which the large candle was lit), the Liturgy of the Word (with all the readings and Psalms and Gloria and Alleluia), and the Liturgy of Baptism (including the Litany of the Saints).The fourth and final part is, perhaps, the most “normal,” but, even if only on grounds of magnitude, it’s not fair to call anything about the Easter Vigil “business as usual.”

The whole Liturgy of the Eucharist—the invitation to the Preface dialogue, the Preface itself [after which the Exsultet from earlier was modeled; that was no accident], the Eucharistic Prayer, and the Our Father—are often chanted, even if that isn’t how things are normally done in a parish week to week. Chant is especially appropriate in the Roman liturgical tradition as a marker of additional festivity and solemnity, which this night has in spades.

After the faithful have received communion, there is the Prayer After Communion, which, like so much else, may be chanted exceptionally on this night because of how special it is. Following it in short order is the dismissal and recessional, and here, potentially, is the most difficult musical part of the whole Mass for the congregation. (For the cantor, it certainly remains the Exsultet, if they have any voice training whatsoever.) One of the most common recessional hymns is “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” set to Lyra Davidica. 

Lyra Davidica has a range of a tenth (from the bottom at “Jesus Christ is risen today…”; to the top at “Raise your joy and triumps high”), and is almost universally sung in C (C E G C F A A G….). Having gotten through everything else relatively unscathed until now, this is the moment when I need to make a quick choice:

1. Did someone decide (as they did here at Notre Dame—the only such instance I could find, where it is sung in B-flat; the lowering by a whole step is extremely helpful, even for such a small difference) to lower the tonic enough that it’ll still be comfortable to reach the high tenth? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbWqCdHzEhk&list=RDDbWqCdHzEhk&start_radio=1 

2. Was it kept in C, and do I feel good enough to go for it, confident I can still make that high E, even after singing all night? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMwPEmUMP7U&list=RDrMwPEmUMP7U&start_radio=1

3. Or, hearing it in C as above, do I decide to “cheat” a little bit and transpose the phrase that reaches up to the highest point down an octave, to a spot in my range where I’ll never have trouble since even the new highest point is still perfectly comfortable? 

I’ve been going to the Vigil every year since 2017, so this year, tonight, will be my 10th. I have never heard my parish take option 1—though I do make sure, just in case, every time. For the first few years, I took option 3, and post-transposition I had no trouble at all. But increasingly, I’ve been having success even with option 2. At some point after the Vigil, I’ll have to provide an update about what took place. 

As you can see, the Vigil is an incredibly musically rich and complex liturgy. I hope that this quick guide can help you get a better sense of what’s going on, and a deeper appreciation for all the work that goes on behind the scenes to make this wonderful celebration as splendid as it always is.