Winchester Alleluia

- Gary D. Penkala

Audio Sample

Sample Notes

Sample Help

Use: General
Required Resources: cantor, organ
Optional Resources: trumpet, SATB choir
Language: English

With a tuneful refrain derived from a familiar hymn and a psalm tone that can be adapted for various Gospel verses, Winchester Alleluia is ideal as a new Gospel Acclamation in your parish. It can be performed simply, by cantor, organist and congregation, or you can expand the resources and use the optional parts for SATB choir and trumpet that are included in the music.

Winchester Alleluia is so named because of its borrowing the opening theme from the tune Winchester New, frequently sung with the text, "On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry." A connection can be made with a feast of Saint John the Baptist. An allusion to the chant Ut queant laxis in the trumpet line for the verse is appropriate, coming as it does from a chant hymn for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (June 24).

Ut queant laxis
Re - sonare fibris
Mi - ra gestorum
Fa - muli tuorum
Sol - ve polluti
La - bii reatum

Of particular significance for musicologists, this chant hymn was written in six phrases, and the music of each begins on a successively higher degree of the scale. History has appropriated the Latin syllable that occurred beneath the first note of each phrase (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) as the names for the scale degrees. The seventh degree was gleaned from the initials of the final words of the stanza, Sancte Ioannes (Saint John), yielding SI. Eventually the first scale degree was renamed to the aesthetic DO, perhaps standing for Domine (Lord). Often, especially in English-speaking countries, the sol is shortened to so and the si becomes ti.