Strictly speaking, Paschaltide is the liturgical season that lasts fifty days, starting with First Vespers of Low Sunday and ending before First Vespers of Trinity Sunday. Liturgically speaking, the 8-day period immediately after Easter and prior to Paschaltide – the Octave of Easter – is distinct from Paschaltide.
For our purposes, we can consider both of these periods as similar because of the musical characteristics that are common to both and that distinguish them from the previous seasons of Septuagesima and Lent, and within Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week and the Triduum.
The most conspicuous aspect of the music during the period after Easter is the return of the Alleluia. There are a number of other very visible differences, but the Alleluia stands out.
The Gloria disappeared at the same time as the Alleluia, way back on Septuagesima Sunday, and it returns fully with the Paschal Vigil. But the Gloria had also put in an appearance on Palm Sunday and again on Holy Thursday – with the organ – and with bells!
The organ also returns at the Paschal Vigil. It had disappeared beginning on the first Sunday of Lent, but it, too, put in a couple of appearances. It was used throughout the Mass on Laetare Sunday, and put in a cameo appearance (to accompany the Gloria) on Holy Thursday.
The Gloria Patri is also back. It had been omitted during Passiontide, but we saw it conspicuously when it concluded the psalms that are sung during the distribution of palms on Palm Sunday.
We sang Mass XVII all during Lent, but we made an exception on Holy Thursday, singing Mass IV. Beginning at the Paschal Vigil, and continuing through and including Pentecost, we sing Mass I (Lux et Origo).
The Alleluia, on the other hand, ceased to be sung on Septuagesima Sunday, and not a trace of it was heard until after the Epistle at the Mass of the Paschal Vigil. It didn’t show up on Laetare Sunday. There was no hint of it either on Palm Sunday, nor on Holy Thursday. It was definitively removed from the liturgy and there were no exceptions. The Alleluia, as an exclamation of pure joy, has no place whatsoever in the liturgy, nor on our lips, during those 63 days from Septuagesima to Easter. But when it returns, it is everywhere! *
At Mass, the typical Gradual and Alleluia are replaced by two Alleluias! Alleluias are inserted in the Introit, and in the Offertory and Communion antiphons.
There is another noteworthy difference in the music after Easter. The Vidi Aquam replaces the Asperges prior to Mass, and the usual invocation (Ostende nobis) and its response conclude with an Alleluia.
Interestingly, the psalm that is sung during the Vidi Aquam is the Confitemini, the same that is sung after the Alleluia makes its first trifold appearance in the Paschal Vigil.
The difference between the music of Lent and that of the period after Easter is remarkable, principally because of the Alleluia, but for many other reasons as well. All of them together help us appreciate the meaning of the Resurrection, and the joys of Easter, in contrast with the meaning of Lent, and the sorrows of the Passion. The musical beauty of the liturgy is nowhere more apparent than it is in the contrast that the liturgy offers us during these two seasons.
This Sunday is known as Quasimodo Sunday as that is the first word of the Introit. It is also called Low Sunday.
We sang Rejoice O Mary, Heavenly Queen for the processional and our now standard Stella Stella Coeli Extirpavit at the Offertory.
At the Communion, we sang the Sequence from Easter Sunday, Victimae Paschali, then O Filii et Filiae. For the recessional the OTHER version of Jesus Christ is Risen Today.
We are planning to sing a new hymn, Sweet Sacrament Divine, at first communions in a few weeks, so after the recessional, the choir sang that so that the congregation will start to learn the melody.
* An interesting side note (pun intended): Those of us in the schola and choir must rehearse for the Easter liturgy, and so, of necessity, in the depths of Holy Week, we find ourselves practicing hymns with the word Alleluia in them. We try not to put our hearts in it though. The liturgical lives of those who sing in the schola and choir are lived about two weeks in advance of what is on the liturgical calendar.
In the image: In Victor Hugo’s novel, Quasimodo, rejected by his parents for his deformities, is abandoned inside Notre Dame Cathedral, at a place where orphans and unwanted children were dropped off.
Monseigneur Claude Frollo finds the child on “Quasimodo Sunday” and “called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly molded the poor little creature was,” Hugo wrote.