The Dominican tune is more elaborate than the more widely-known Roman plainchant version, and has its roots in the Cistercian Order, whose liturgy St Dominic adapted back in the thirteenth century for his new order.
That the antiphon is still sung from the start of Advent until Candlemas marks the persistence of the ‘long Christmas’ season which until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council ran all the way up to 2nd February; in the contemporary calendar this period before Lent and after Christmas is marked as the first weeks of ‘Ordinary Time’.
Ambrose Johannes, Oxford fraternity
January 2022