Tomorrow we celebrate the Second Sunday of Advent. To celebrate this second Sunday, we at Neumz have chosen the Communion antiphon, Jerusalem surge. The text is taken from the prophet Baruch Chapter 5, verse 5, and 4, v. 36; a book rarely used in the liturgy. Baruch, a disciple of Jeremiah, was a captive in Babylon. Prophesying the return of the captives to their homeland, Baruch, in an eloquent speech, addresses the holy city and invites it to rise up to see, in the distance, its children returning to it, wrapped in the joy of the Lord, who has set them free.

As can be seen, the Biblical verses are reversed from their natural order in the book of Baruch. This is of course intentional: with the new arrangement of the text, all reference to the sons who "come", who "bring" joy to Jerusalem, has been removed. With this reformulation of the text, the one who "comes" to Jerusalem is "your God", which is the cause of joy, and this joy is communicated by Jerusalem to her children. These verses sing of the benefits that Jerusalem receives from God and passes on to her children who live in her. Jerusalem, by itself, has acquired a personality of its own and its greatest pride is to be the dwelling place that God chose for itself and its own, the joy comes to it from its God (a Deo tuo).

As for the melody, the first musical phrase has a construction that allows it to represent what is being sung: Jerusalem, arise! (Jerusalem, surge): an intense but somewhat restrained joy of one who is anxious to communicate to a loved one news that will make him exult with joy. The melodic movement begins around the D, the fundamental of mode 2. Jerusalem is the beloved name, the soul sings with great tenderness, she enjoys the pes of the accent and the clivis that follows, both articulated neumas, although the joy she feels leads her to move with verve and vivacity towards the imperative, surge, with an impulse of immense joy that is manifested by that movement of thirds from the D that closes Jerusalem to the A that culminates the accent of surge.

But the clamour of this Communion chant encompasses more: et sta in excelso (and stand on high). This request to "stand on high" the melody expresses first by rising back up to the A, and then with a cadence towards the fundamental D, which in mode 2 is very strong and consistent, given the narrow margin between its dominant F and the fundamental D, all with a series of elongated pes.

The second musical phrase, et vide iucunditatem, returns to the low register, around the D; there is no longer the same verve, nor the vivacity of the first phrase: the joy is still present, indeed, the text invites us to see the joy itself, the object of that joy, a joy that comes from God. But in order to contemplate it, it is the eyes of the heart that must be opened. This contemplative character permeates the beginning of this second phrase until the return to the high register around the dominant, the F, in the accent of jucunditatem, making this joy shine even more brightly, but without reaching the A, it remains a contained joy.

In the third musical phrase, to express this coming of God, the melody first of all ascends to the A to make a wide and elegant cadential movement to the low A, underlining the F and D with two pneumatic cuts, to symbolise the contemplation of this descent of God who "comes to you" (quæ veniet tibi), the Word who descends to us. This "to you" receives special attention, the melody being taken to the lowest part of the piece, with great emphasis on telling Jerusalem that it is "to her", and not to another city, that God will come. In the last clause, a Deo tuo, the melodic movement plays with creating an opposition to the previous: while for Jerusalem the waiting is to enter into the depths of her longing (tibi), with the coming of the Lord (a Deo tuo) she is raised to the heights to which she was called at the beginning (surge) and finally reaches that rest which gives her the final cadence of tuo with the D, which appears three times, a totally peaceful cadence, which suits perfectly the name Jerusalem, which means "vision of Peace".