Post-Pentecost Alleluias

Go directly to the database query

Phase 1 of the project concerns alleluias for the Sundays after Pentecost. Over 500 different series from over 2000 sources are presented here. Phase 2 is devoted to the Alleluias of Easter week and the Sundays after Easter. Phase 3 will be an enlarged version of Phase 1 and will hence deal once again with alleluias for the Sundays after Pentecost.

Phase 1

The choice and ordering of alleluias for the Sundays after Pentecost and for Eastertide varies considerably from source to source. As early as 1894 W. H. Frere remarked that "a synoptic table of Alleluias is by far the best test by which to discriminate between varying uses." (Graduale Sarisburiense, Introduction, p. l.) Many scholars have assembled such tables and some have appeared in print. The largest collections, however, have remained unpublished. These are to be found in the papers of Victor Leroquais, Gabriel Beyssac, Michel Huglo and Jeremy Noble. Leroquais collected alleluia series for his work on missals in French public libraries; the catalogue he published did not, however, make the actual series known. They are recorded in a manuscript notebook now preserved among his papers in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Beyssac collected a very large number of series but published almost none. Jeremy Noble collected series in a large number of printed missals and kindly shared them with the present writer. In an outstandingly generous gesture, Michel Huglo also allowed me to borrow his very extensive lists for a considerable length of time.

The materials here presented bring together (i) most of those which have appeared in articles and other scholarly publications, (ii) some which I have gathered in the course of my own research, and (iii) those of Leroquais and Huglo. I was helped in the typing of the tables by Klaus Thomayer of the Institut für Musikwissenschaft, Universität Regensburg. The conversion into a database and the compilation of programmes to search and compare the series was accomplished by Robert Klugseder. Instructions about using the database are given below.

Phase 2

Phase 1 covers series of alleluias for the Sundays after Pentecost. Phase 2, covering the alleluias of Easter week and the Sundays after Easter, was completed by Peter Wittwer (Zürich). Wittwer used not only the extensive lists compiled by Michel Huglo but also those of Gabriel Beyssac, preserved with Beyssac's papers in Sion, Switzerland (link to Wittwer's edition).

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to Michel Huglo and Jeremy Noble for sharing their alleluia lists with me, to Peter Wittwer for sharing information and discussing the execution of this joint project, to Klaus Thomayer for assistance in compiling the lists, and to Robert Klugseder for organizing the search programmes and setting up this website. I remain responsible for any sins of omission and commission, and would be grateful for corrections and suggestions for improving our "service". In presenting this research tool - one of the most important of its kind available to us, I believe - I am reassured by the knowledge that in Phase 3 of our project Peter Wittwer will present the material in a still more extensive and improved form.

David Hiley 2009

Search and display options, instructions and tables