Laetabimur In Salutari Tuo 2
Today we celebrate the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. We have chosen once again the communion chant Laetabimur in salutari tuo to celebrate this Sunday. The text of this chant is taken from Psalm 19:6. It is a call to happiness. The nuance of the melody of a communion chant is to lead us into tasting and savoring the Word of God that is found in the chant, of the Body of Christ received in the sung word, for it is in chant that the Body and Blood of Christ are expressed and savored. This savoring of the Word is given in the melody by endowing each syllable with a amount of sounds but, in our communion antiphon, it is given mainly in the first and last word, which are the two verbs that call to joy (Laetabimur and magnificabimur). The melody is framed between these two verbs, which call for joy, and which receive the same nuance of pausing to taste the Word and, through it, the Eucharist that is celebrated. The faithful become comforted with the food that they have just received.
The structure of this piece is peculiar. It consists of a single musical phrase (nowhere is there a full bar). However, within that unique phrase, there are two obvious parts and the second repeats in a symmetrical form like the first one. The first begins with the verb and is followed by a circumstantial complement, in salutari; the second begins with the circumstantial in nomine and ends with the verb that is in the same tense and number as the previous one: laetabimur-magnificabimur.
As for the melody, it is composed in mode II, the mode that sings the introspection of the prayerful one. With its narrow range, it expresses marvelously the recollection and inner contemplation. In our communion, an immense joy from the depths of the soul for what we have received from the Lord.
In the first part of the only phrase that this antiphon has, laetabimur in salutari tuo, we will rejoice in your salvation, the melodic movement begins by delighting in the interior of the prayerful one, who experiences this joy in his interior. In the accent of the word laetabimur, we find ourselves with this call to joy. The semitonal relationship of Si-Do, and Mi-Fa, found in this first incise, confer a great tenderness and closeness from the soul to its Creator. This beginning develops in an oscillation between the fundamental, the Re, and the Do. However, a very clear ascending movement becomes noticeable in the last syllable that forms the cadence rising to the Fa, the dominant of the mode, in a beautiful quilismatic movement. After this majestic call to joy, the melodic movement rises to the Do, the summit of the piece, to present the motif of this inner joy, which becomes here an excessive external joy: in salutari tuo, in your salvation. The prayerful one opens his soul wide open and sings with all his being: a glorious succession of two torculi that lead us enthusiastically to the La, and from there, makes the accent of the word salutari shine with a sublime neumatic cut on the La, which invites us to the beatific contemplation of the salvation that the Lord brings to us. From this underlined La, the voice elevates to the Do to sing with great jubilation. From the summit of the piece, the melody descends in a reverent movement to the mode’s dominant in the word tuo. A graceful turn around the Fa in the cadence of this incise underlines the possessive adjective tuo before the melody reverently bows again with a leap of a fourth, Sol-Re, and closes the word with the same quilismatic movement as the previous incise, emphasizing furthermore this cause-and-effect, happiness-salvation.
The second musical phrase repeats the structure of the previous one, but it is inverted. It begins with great agility and it affirms with enthusiasm that the reason for this joy and gladness is the Name of the Lord, et in nomine Domini. The prayerful person sings the Name of the Lord with great fervor and devotion. His gaze turns again to the heights, in the high range, contemplating and adoring that Name before which every creature kneels. The melodic movement traces a masterful melodic arc with the main degrees of mode II: Re-Fa-La-Fa-Re, it is the Name of the Lord, and the worshipper prostrates before Him. In the following incise, a uniformity to Domini, Dei nostri, of our God, the melody sings with loving tenderness the accent of Dei, Fa-Mi, again the semitonal relationship: the Fa is masterfully amplified, an echo of the Fa reduplicated with an oriscus at the end of Domini. After that, all is fervent contemplation in the melodic ascent that closes the word Dei, where the La resounds for the last time. From the heights, the prayerful one gradually bows again, La-Fa-Re, in nostri, and even touches the low Do in a gesture of prostration.
This Do is the starting point of the last incise, magnificabimur, we will glorify. Like the intonation of this communion, this verb is given a very considerable sonorous force, a motif which curiously also appears at the end of the communion Dominus regit me and also at the end, in educavit me, he led me. It is a very beautiful melodic turn in which the prayerful one sings with great fervor, the melody rising majestically from the Do to the Fa and from there to the Sol. Afterward, in a final inclination, it descends to the Do in the accent of the word. This compositional jewel concludes with a quilismatic movement in the low range that allows us to savor until the last moment that joy in which the soul magnifica (magnifies), the Lord.