Throughout the year, the Church prays different Marian Antiphons based on the proper liturgical season.  We’ll post the current Antiphon throughout the year:

Advent/Christmas:  Alma Redemptoris Mater
Lent:  Ave Regina Caelorum
Easter: Regina Caeli
Pentecost:  Salve Regina

Here’s a great article about the different seasons, highlighting the Ave Regina Caelorum, which is sung from Advent until Candelmas on February 2nd.

Here’s the Simple Tone version, sung by “the Benedictine Monks of the Abbey at Ganagobie.” Chant score is in the Liber Usualis (1961), p. 277.    (English translation below.)

Here’s the chant score of the Simple Tone version, from the Liber Usualis:

Here’s a bit about Alma Redemptoris Mater, including an English translation, from “Singing the Four Seasonal Marian Anthems,” by Lucy Carroll, published in Adoremus:

Alma Redemptoris Mater

Sung from the first Sunday of Advent until the Feast of the Purification on February 2 (the original ending date of the Christmas season), this prayer tells of Gabriel’s announcement, and of Mary’s divine motherhood. The text is credited to Herimann the Lame, a monk of Reichenau (1013-1054). Herimann’s Latinized name was Hermanus Contractus and he is sometimes also credited with the chant melody.

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli porta manes et stella maris, succurre cadenti, surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum genitorem, Virgo prius, ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore sumens illud ave, peccatorum miserere.

This translation is by the Reverend Adrian Fortescue, 1913:

Holy mother of our Redeemer, thou gate leading to heaven and star of the sea; help the falling people who seek to rise, thou who, all nature wondering, didst give birth to thy holy Creator. Virgin always, hearing the greeting from Gabriel’s lips, take pity on sinners.