Today we celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Advent. To celebrate this last Sunday of Advent, we at Neumz have chosen the communion chant Ecce virgo concipiet. The text is taken from the Book of Isaiah 7:14, the great prophet of Advent. Here he communicates the prophecy to King Ahaz: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son…” (Isaiah 7:14). That promised sign is the one that comes on the day of the Annunciation. It is the same word or message of the prophet that the Archangel says to the Virgin: “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus” (Luke 1:31). This text is therefore entirely appropriate for the day on which the Annunciation is commemorated. However, it does not seem to be sung here as a prophecy, the Church returns to these words at the moment of communion: contemplating, in the light of the sacramental grace, the Incarnation which is prolonged by the Eucharist in the entire Mystical Body. The Church also sings the joy of Emmanuel, of God with us, at the same time as the mystery of Christmas in which the divine word is once again mystically fulfilled.

This communion takes the text of the prophecy of Isaiah, but here it speaks directly of a Saviour who will be born of a virgin, a child who will be called Emmanuel. In the New Law, Jesus takes the name of Emmanuel to indicate the indissoluble character of the friendship established between God and man. Sin can no longer destroy this order because as long as Jesus is Jesus, and will be forever, he will also always be our advocate with the Father and will be able to wash away our sins with his blood.

As for the melody, it is composed in mode I, the mode of the solemn majestic announcements; it has a certain lyricism. The piece begins with a beautiful melodic arc, Re-Sol-Re, Ecce virgo, behold a virgin. It is worth pointing out that both the melody at the beginning and the end of this communion antiphon moves around the fundamental, the Re, to express the conception of the Son (Ecce virgo) as his Name (Emmanuel). This first incise is very discreet, intimate, and contemplative. The lyric indicated in the ‘Einsiedeln Manuscript’, votiver, with devotion, is rather rare in the repertoire, and deeper in this sense: a kind of deep delight is created, and the soul admires the mystery of the Virgin Mother. In the next incise, this contemplative delight is extended, and the surprising revelation appears: concipiet, (a virgin!) will conceive. This verb is treated with great care, the rhythm is widened, and the sounds are lengthened, and recreated. The melodic movement rises majestically with a pes quadratus from the Do (Re in the Graduale Novum version) to the La, the dominant of the mode, which resounds for the first time. The soul sings another beautiful melodic arc but with greater amplitude and brilliance than the previous one: all is adoration in the melodic ascent and reverence in the descent towards the Re, with a masterful neumatic cut on the Fa of the posttonic syllable before settling on the Re of the intermediate cadence. In the last incise of the first phrase, et pariet filium, and will give birth to a son, as if the soul, every time more enlightened, understands in what the mystery of divine maternity consists, sets its gaze on the heights, with an identical melodic movement, two pes quadratus Re-Sol (version of the Graduale Novum) and Sol-La, it rises beyond the La: it touches the Do for the first time, amplifying it with a pulsation and even reaches the octave of the fundamental, melodic summit of the mode. It is a divine birth, the Son is given to us from on high. From the high Re, the melodic movement bends profoundly to the La (the Sol in the Graduale Novum) and, after a brief recitative on the La, in filium, it rises again to the Do in a solemn quilismatic movement to end up settling on the La and closing the first phrase.

But as soon as the soul becomes aware of this second wonder, a virgin conceiving and giving birth to a son, a third one opens before it: the mystery of God with us this time, Emmanuel. The name is also given to us from heaven. Et vocabitur, and he will be called, the prayerful one continues to gaze on the heights. Once again and for the last time the Do resounds, underlined by a bivirga, note the parallelism, the compositional genius: if in pariet we have two pes framing the double high Do, then in et vocabitur we have two clivis with episema La-Sol, embracing the bivirga in the Do. The semantic and musical links are evident. Everything is also expanded in et vocabitur. The mystery expands and extends to the soul. She feels she enters into it, in this moment of communion. She is gathered, enclosed in the wonders that take place within her. The melody follows her in her contemplation, the B-flat resounds, conferring that semitonal proximity to the La, that proximity to the mystery that the prayerful one sings. After a brief turn in the low register, around the Fa, in the penultimate incise, nomen ejus, his name, the moment is approaching when the name chosen by the Father is revealed. The melodic movement rises to the dominant, solemnized once again by the quilisma, with the touch of the B-flat as the ornamentation of the La, to continue singing that closeness to the divinity that resounded in the previous incise.  And finally, it is time to reveal the name: Emmanuel. The melody practically stops, everything is unction, the soul delights with maximum fervor in making the divine name shine, God with us. The melodic turn is very close to the one sung just before in the offertory, Ave Maria, in fructus ventris. That reverence in the melodic descent of the pretonic syllable, from the Fa to the Re, that fervent and enthusiastic ascent from the Re to the La in the accent of the word, amplified, of course, by the quilismatic movement, giving it all the solemnity and majesty it deserves. And from the La, the genuflection of the climacus, Fa-Mi-Re, in the posttonic syllable. All this sublimely conveys all the tenderness of the soul for the divine Host that is with her, the loving devotion to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God.