Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, marks the opening of the “Great” or “Holy Week”, the centre and culmination of the liturgical year. The liturgy of the opening day strikingly sets out what the Church celebrates and commemorates during this whole week: the “dominica de passione Domini”, as it has been known since the Sacramentarium Gelasianum (6th c.), leads us with the readings and chants of its Mass right to the core of the infinite mystery of the Passion and death of Jesus, while the “pascha florum” or “dominica in palmis”, tracing the historical events in chronological order, observes the feast commemorating the Messiah’s triumphant entry into his city (five days before the Passover: see John 12,1 & 12) with a ceremonial procession accompanied by songs of praise which already anticipate something of the exultation at Easter of the Resurrection and victory of Christ.
It is significant that the procession originated in Jerusalem itself, where the task of bringing the original scene to life as it was described in the Gospels was made much easier by the presence of the actual landmarks mentioned in the biblical account. In her description of the festival held in Jerusalem around 385 AD, Aetheria, a pilgrim from Aquitaine, records how conscientiously the people strove to present a realistic and dramatic version of these historical events. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and soon the festival spread from Jerusalem to other churches in the Orient, in particular the Syrian Church. Later it also advanced westwards and was taken up first by the Gallican, Spanish and Milanese liturgies and then by the rest of the Western churches, until relatively late (probably only in the 11th c.) Rome too adopted the custom.
Over the years and from place to place the scope and form of the festival altered, but despite this diversity in the various traditions the basic elements always and everywhere remained the same. The celebration usually began in or beside a church or chapel some distance from the main church, quite often right outside the town, with the blessing of the palm branches, which early on developed into a long drawnout ritual of its own. (The “Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae instauratus” promulgated in 1955 quite rightly drastically reduced the burgeoning number and variety of chants, lessons and orations used at this blessing ceremony.) Carrying the Gospels or a large cross in the procession as a token of Christ’s presence became widely popular; at certain points along the route, in a church by the wayside, for instance, these would be worshipped. (The custom of taking the Holy Eucharist in the procession remained confined to England and Normandy; the wooden palm ass with the figure of Christ astride it was found only in Germany). Occasionally there were other rites of various kinds when the procession entered the gates of the town or the portal of the main church.
The important role of music to highlight the dramatic events is shown by the large number of surviving acclamations, antiphons, responsories and hymns composed just for this occasion, with the "Hosanna" appearing again and again as the main tenor. By the late Middle Ages this vast repertoire has swollen to almost sixty processional chants (of which the “Ordo Cantus Missae” in the new “Missale Romanum” [1973] has retained only five!). The works presented here were chosen mainly for their great age and for the fact that they were widely sung. All the nine pieces performed here existed in textual form as early as the 9th c. and the music was noted down in the neumatic scripts dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, which are of particular interest to those concerned with singing the chants nowadays, either because they were written down exceptionally early or because the notation was particularly carefully recorded, provided the main concern is to give this music new life and to achieve a greater fidelity to the music as it has been handed down to us. For the processional chants on this recording as well as for the chants of the Mass the Codices of the Aquitaine and Beneventine group with diastematic notation (in particular Benevent VI. 34, Paris BN lat. 903 and Paris BN lat. 776) were consulted (this led in some sections to deviations from the musical text in the Editio VatiCana); important hints of how the works should be performed were provided by the meticulous record of rhythmical nuances in the Codices of the St. Gallen and Metz group (in particular St. Gallen 359, St. Gallen 390/91, Einsiedeln 121, Bamberg lit. 6, Laon 239 and Chartres 47).
The antiphon Hosanna filio David stands like a great banner at the beginning of the festival, with the crowd’s shouts of welcome to the Messiah in Jerusalem ringing out as the opening of the ceremony. The “Hosanna” (Psalm 118, 25), originally translated as “save now” but already in Jesus’ day a traditional exclamation of joy and adoration, opens on a rising fifth, like other chants in the 7th mode to signify great exultation. The acclamation “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini” (Psalm 118, 26) explains the jubilation and reverence: Jesus is recognised as the true messenger of God, entitled to the great ancient title of the Messiah, “Son of David” and “King of Israel”.
For the solemn procession itself all kinds of different songs came to be used, so that during the often very long course of the procession there was no lack of variety. As well as simple refrains and psalmody in the style of the Office antiphony there are antiphons with more ambitious texts and more complex melodies, hymns almost as catchy as songs and complicated responsories. If one includes the chants from the Mass whose Proper for this particular day includes works of especially high quality, there is no festival in the Church year which gives a clearer picture of the great wealth of styles and forms in the Gregorian repertoire than the liturgy for Palm Sunday.
Four of the antiphons chosen for this recording are in the simple form of the refrain from the Office. Pueri Hebraeorum (here framing two verses from the 24th Psalm) bring in the children who in St. Matthew’s account had a special role to play (Matt. 21, 15ff). Coeperunt omnes and Occurrunt turbae (sung here in the melodic version taken from the Codex Benevent VI.34) remind us that the Gospels actually refer to two processions: one consisting of the disciples who with Jesus in their midst descended singing from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19, 36 ff) and the other made up of pilgrims who came out of the city to meet Him (John 12, 12ff). Finally Cum angelis, sometimes used as the opening antiphon, is intended to arouse the present congregation celebrating this festival.
Amongst the stylistically more complex chants which were probably not sung while the procession was under way but at one of the stations en route are the antiphon Ante sex dies with its melismatic Hosanna refrain and the antiphon Cum audisset, the text and melody of which clearly reveal its Gallican origins. (The shortened version which appears in the Editio Vaticana has here been augmented according to the Albi and Saint Yrieix Codices, reestablishing the original symmetry of the parallel sections.) The most frequently mentioned and probably also the most popular processional chant is the hymn Gloria, laus et honor. Of the 39 original distiches by Bishop Theodulph of Orleans (died 821 AD) the six which are still in use today very soon spread right across the West. The hymn was often assigned to the last “statio” at the gates of the town or in front of the church door. There it was sung alternately by a small choir standing on the walls or inside the church, and the larger choir of approaching pilgrims who answered the individual distiches each time with the first verse repeated as a refrain.
The responsory Ingrediente Domino accompanied the actual entry into the town or church, once again before the procession comes to an end or leads into the liturgy of the Mass expressly linking it with the mystery of the Resurrection.
Then, all of a sudden, the atmosphere abruptly changes; after the songs of praise in the procession and exultant Hosannas of the church paying homage to its Redeemer, for the first time the voice of Christ Himself can be heard in the songs of the Mass. For although they almost all come from the Psalter, the texts of the Proper chants can only be understood as the words of the Lord Himself who must suffer to enter into majesty, and who in the vivid words of the psalms freely conveys the anguish, fear and desolation into which His Passion forces him.
The text of the Introitus Antiphon, a cry for help out of extreme torment and distress, comes from the 22nd Psalm; according to Mark 15,34 and Matthew 27,46 Jesus uttered these words as His dying prayer. The Responsorium graduale with words from the 73rd Psalm is also heavy with fear and affliction but it also proclaims the faith of the sufferer unshaken despite His tribulations. (These two chants have been included here for their content and musical importance, although in the new “Ordo Cantus Missae” they are consigned not to Palm Sunday but to the Mass sung on the preceding day. The version of the Introitus Antiphon from the Aquitaine script has been used here as it brings out the old reciting note b of the 8th mode better.)
The verses of the Tractus are also taken from the 22nd Psalm, and in the original order directly preceded the reading of the Passion story; in them one can hear not only the last outcry by the crucified man (“My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) but also the announcement of the Redeemer’s “people that shall be born” who owe their life to His abandoning Himself to death. Although the richly melismatic melody of the lines rests on a single psalmodic structure which employs a series of typical turns of phrase, the Tractus too demonstrates that singular feature of all Gregorian music: it is the words themselves and not the prescribed and rigid structural rules or the melodic patterns which really determine the form the music takes.
After the account of the Passion there is another lamentation of utter desolation in the Antiphon for the Offertory, one of the most moving pieces in the whole Graduale Romanum. The chant is based on words from the 69th Psalm, in which the Lord’s Passion seems compressed into a single racking cry of pain.
Whilst all the preceding Proper diants used texts from the psalms, the Commnnio Antiphon includes some words from the New Testament: the prayer spoken by the Lord during His night of fear at Gethsemane, where He subordinates Himself to the will of His Father. It is no coincidence that just at the point at which the festival is approaching the moment of greatest nearness and union, the “ipsissima vox” of Christ is heard. What is surprising - not just in comparison with the other Mass chants but within the whole framework of the neumatic style to which most of the Communio antiphons belong - is the simplicity and devout restraint of the melody conveying these holy words, a simplicity of course which is far more effective than any involved melisma would be. (For the opening the older version from the St. Gallen and Metz tradition - with extended Pes and Torculus specialis - was chosen, as it brings out the cry “Father!” even more poignantly than the version in the Editio Vaticana which became established quite early on.) The fact too that many of the surviving verses of this antiphon, contrary to normal usage, use words from the Gospels instead of psalm texts illustrates the particular significance of this last chant in the liturgy of Palm Sunday.