Immaculate Antiphon
Haec est virga in qua nec nodus originalis, nec cortex actualis culpae fuit.
You may have noticed that I have booklets available on how to sing the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sadly, I haven’t polished these up for publication. They are still rather inconsistent and at times messy, but they are helpful for pointing you in the right direction. Preparing them for publishing feels like an epic quest beyond my present abilities. While this is a noble goal, maybe a similar yet smaller task might help towards the ultimate end. Maybe I can make a booklet for a smaller Little Office first!
The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception shares some similarities and differences. Like the Divine Office, it is arranged by hours and employs similar versicles and collects. On the whole it has a rather different feel, being based around a hymn instead of the Psalms. If you can pick a hymn tune then the hours are pretty much ready to sing. That is, until you get to the last part.
The last hour of the day is Completorium or Compline. While the large part of the hour follows the same pattern as the other hours, it ends with a new section called The Commendation or Commendatio. This consists of a hymn followed by the response, Deo gratias, then an Antiphon, Versicle and Response closing with a Collect or Prayer.
The first version I recorded only had the hymn of the Commendation, so it was only recently that I began to puzzle over the Antiphon. The other parts can be sung easily with common tunes. Antiphons are little snippets each with their own melody. There are hundreds of them in the Liber Usualis and the Antiphonale Monasticum, but not this particular one.
Haec est virga in qua nec nodus originalis, nec cortex actualis culpae fuit.
This is the rod wherein was neither the knot of original sin, nor the bark of actual sin.
Some research revealed that this particular antiphon can be found in Vespers for the medieval Franciscan feast of the Immaculate Conception, long before the universal feast was established after Our Lady gave her title to St Bernadette at Lourdes. The two manuscripts containing the antiphon date from the 17th and 18th centuries.
A beautifully photographed manuscript clearly gave all the antiphons for this feast. The neumes are intelligible even after hundreds of years. I transcribed this piece into “modern” square notes and added it to Gregobase.
And here is how it sounds: