There are many chants and other sacred compositions entitled Hodie Christus Natus Est (Today Christ Is Born). Palestrina, Gabrieli, and numerous other composers, many anonymous, wrote church-related works whose title incorporated those once-commonly heard Latin words. The music and text of Hodie probably date to the early middle ages, before 1000. The words tell of the birth of Christ and of the resultant rejoicing by both angels and mankind. Hodie was generally sung at Christmas time in the early Christian church, and different versions of it evolved, such as the mode 1 antiphon rendition. The melody to Hodie is beautiful in its serene, lyrical flow and in its relatively restricted range. Only in the fifth of the six lines of its verse ("today the righteous rejoice") does the vocal line soar well above the previous limited range. The theme is undoubtedly an earlier version of the one used in the Roman Catholic Tridentine Mass' Our Father. There, however, it is a bit more somber and contains less color. The Hodie Christus Natus Est typically has a duration of only a minute.

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