If all you had to go by was Sacred Music for the New Millenium, you would think the world stopped on Good Friday.  Where have I been?  After the rush preparing music for Holy Week and Easter, and all the emotional angst that came along with it, I was in need of a break afterwards.  Not that the schola cantorum took a vacation... in fact, we are now singing weekly at our 10 AM Mass.  Throughout the Easter Season, we chanted Vidi Aquam for the sprinkling rite. 

But just to complete the story, I ought to share what we did for Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. 

If you have never attended Easter Vigil, I hope you will make a point of doing so next year... preferably at a church that waits until sundown to light the fire which then gives light to the year's brand new Easter Candle, marked with the wounds of Christ.  It was COLD this year, but the die-hards gathered outside the church around the fire, then processed behind the priest as he chanted "Christ Our Light," and we echoed "Thanks be to God."

The Easter Vigil service is the one time of the year when priests who may barely chant anything the rest of the liturgical year tune up their voices to chant the Exultet, a beautiful, ancient prayer.  The church should still be pretty dark at this point, just enough lights to get by, and everyone will be holding their own tapers, lighted form the Easter Candle, the flame passed from one person's candle to another thoughout the church, even up in the choir loft.

This if followed by the most generous serving of Old Testament scripture readings you could ever have hoped to hear in one evening (as many as 7), punctuated by a cappella chanting of the psalm responses.

Then it happens: The Gloria.  ALL the lights are switched on at once, the tower bells begin to peel, and bells are rung in the church (a server at the altar and someone in the choir loft at our parish) throughout the whole singing of The Gloria, harkening back to Holy Thursday and the Mass of the Lord's Supper. 

The epistle from the New Testament is read, then the next musical high point: the first Alleluia of Easter!  It is longer than the typical Alleluia and more uplifting, actually a responsorial with three verses in our missallette.  But it is such a mental relief to give up the Lenten fast of withholding our Alleluias and just let them burst forth in joyful song.

Easter Vigil marks an important night for those who journeyed through the RCIA process (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), as well as RCIC (...for children).  During the service, the unbaptized are baptized, the non-Catholic are received into the fullness of the Catholic faith, the unconfirmed receive the Holy Spirit, and those new Catholics who never tasted the Bread of Life before finally receive their First Holy Communion. 

For our schola, during this time there were a couple of short responses provided by the missallette that we sang around the time of the Baptisms.  Then during the Confirmations, the well-rehearsed and much loved Veni Creator Spiritus was chanted. 

We sang the very familiar Mozart Ave Verum at Communion with string accompaniment (by the time we sang it for 10 AM Mass the next day it actually sounded pretty good...) and otherwise led the singing of the great Easter Hymns along with the organ.

On Easter Sunday, we did some of the same music from the night before, minus the Veni Creator Spiritus, but adding in the chanting of the introit (Resurrexi) and the Easter Sequence:

Victimae paschali laudes immolent Christiani...

So you can see the world did not stop on Good Friday, and there's much more to write about from my ongoing adventures in the sacred music world, but for now, at least you know what happened at Easter.

God bless!