Aurelio Porfiri
Anyone who has some familiarity with the musical tradition of the Catholic Church knows well that the pieces in honor of the Eucharist form a large part of the repertoire itself. Composers of all ages have made great efforts of writing music in honor of this great sacrament, this sacrament which for us is the source of salvation.
At an Angelus address on August 16, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said: “Yesterday we celebrated the great Feast of Mary taken up into Heaven, and today we read these words of Jesus in the Gospel: ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven’ (Jn 6: 51). One cannot but be struck by this parallel that rotates around the symbol of ‘Heaven’: Mary was ‘taken up’ to the very place from which her Son had ‘come down.’ Of course, this language, which is biblical, expresses in figurative terms something that never completely coincides with the world of our own concepts and images. But let us pause for a moment to think! Jesus presents himself as the ‘living bread,’ that is, the food which contains the life of God himself which can communicate to those who eat it, the true nourishment that gives life, which is really and deeply nourishing. Jesus says: ‘If any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh’ (Jn 6: 51). Well, from whom did the Son of God take his ‘flesh,’ his actual, earthly humanity? He took it from the Virgin Mary. In order to enter our mortal condition, God took from her a human body. In turn, at the end of her earthly life, the Virgin’s body was taken up into Heaven by God and brought to enter the heavenly condition. It is a sort of exchange in which God always takes the full initiative but, in a certain sense, as we have seen on other occasions, he also needs Mary, her ‘yes’ as a creature, her very flesh, her actual existence, in order to prepare the matter for his sacrifice: the Body and the Blood, to offer them on the Cross as a means of eternal life and, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, as spiritual food and drink.”
Surely, a composer who was able to exalt these words of Jesus was Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594), the greatest composer that the Catholic Church has ever produced. At the service of the Church in Rome for most of his life, he was an excellent composer, able to exalt the liturgical texts with a music that knew how to penetrate its deepest essence. For this he was considered a theologian composer, a musician who knew how to draw their most mystical and spiritual resonances from the texts. After his death, he was admired by all composers after him, considered a model of composition not only in the liturgical but also in a broader sense. He was able to achieve a balance in the vocal art that remains unsurpassed after him.
An example of this is the four mixed part motet Ego sum panis vivus, one of the many gems in his repertoire. Published in the Motectorum Quatuor Vocibus Liber Secundus in 1584, the text is taken from the antiphon to the Benedictus of the fourth feria on Wednesday in the octave of Pentecost (words taken from the Gospel of John 6, 48-50): “Ego sum panis vivus. Patres vestri manducaverunt manna in deserto et mortui sunt. Hic est panis de caelo descendens: si quis ex ipso manducaverit non morietur.” Lino Bianchi, in his monumental book on Palestrina, says that Jesus’ words, referring precisely to this motet, are recalled in a “high reenactment of them.” Bianchi himself adds further on: “The source of Palestrina’s art is the word, felt in all its possible potential; in which it assumes and expresses, according to the contexts in which it is inserted, meanings, attitudes of gesture and feeling, allusiveness, evocations, motions of thought, in the boundless range, from the most immediate and tender loving reflection of the profane madrigal, to theological speculation ecstatically more inaccessible than the mass, the motet, the spiritual madrigal. From the most intimate, personal and personalized feeling, to the collective feeling, innumerable personal, brought to the very dimensions of the inconceivable.”
This attempt to get inside the word, to dig its deeper meaning into music, is certainly one of Palestrina’s characteristics, a characteristic that puts his art on an extraordinarily high level, a level that is difficult to reach, where the air becomes too thin. A level where probably only mystics can breathe, but which is good for us to contemplate, even in our daily miseries, a music that reminds us of a world that one day we hope will be accessible to us too. It is very important to understand how musicians, when composing at the highest level, produce a different kind of thought, a thought that is important to understand (for what is possible) in its own level. We are used to thinking that to understand means only to grasp concepts, but indeed if you take the very word, “under-stand”, means “to stand under”, to recognize there is something that is above you. In Latin we say “comprehendere,” “to get with,” meaning the understanding, in this sense also has a relational meaning, that of connecting things.
In the initial dialogue of the motet, which establishes a mode of tritus, the exposition of the bicinium (i.e. the entry of the first two voices that converse by exchanging the melody) we can observe two dynamics, a descending sequence followed by a rapid ascending on the word “panis.” This dynamic seems to us to perfectly represent that of the incarnation which lowers itself to elevate us, a dynamic that we see at work in our faith. Jesus is the living bread who offers himself for us to bring us to him. An inconceivable act of humility, but which we Christians believe with the strength that faith can give us.
In a Roman church there is a statue representing humility. She is a woman, I seem to remember, holding a ball. What does this have to do with humility? Because with more force you throw the ball down the more will it bounce up. Here is a beautiful image of humility, whoever humbles himself will be exalted. So, we see this low and high dynamic in action throughout the motet. For example, see the treatment of the phrase “Hic est panis de caelo descendens,” with that melodic leap over the word “coelo”.
In this, Palestrina’s work perfectly reflects the style of Gregorian chant, as we find confirmed in a book called La melodia palestriniana e il canto gregoriano by the Romanian musicologist Liviu Comes. In this book we find a quote from Richard Wagner who says that Palestrina’s work was “the model of the supreme perfection of sacred music.” A model that, let us not forget, was also affirmed by the Catholic Church itself at its highest level. Let us think of Pope Pius X’s motu proprio on Sacred Music of 1903. It authoritatively states, after having enumerated the qualities of true sacred music: “The aforementioned qualities are also possessed in an excellent degree by classical polyphony, especially of the Roman School, which in the sixteenth century obtained the maximum of its perfection through the work of Pier Luigi da Palestrina and then continued to produce compositions of excellent liturgical and musical goodness. Classical polyphony approaches very well to the supreme model of all sacred music which is Gregorian chant, and for this reason it deserved to be accepted together with Gregorian chant, in the most solemn functions of the Church, such as those of the Pontifical Chapel. Therefore, it too will have to give itself back widely in ecclesiastical functions, especially in the most distinguished basilicas, cathedrals, seminaries and other ecclesiastical institutes, where the necessary means are not usually lacking.” A very clear statement.
Moreover, Pius XI in 1928, 25 years after the Motu Proprio, in the Bull Divini Cultus, affirms: “As for the schools of children, they must be established not only in the major churches and cathedrals, but also in the minor churches and parish churches, and the children are educated there in beautiful singing by the chapel masters, so that their voices, according to the ancient custom of the Church, are added to the virile choirs, especially when in polyphonic music the soprano part, or cantus, is entrusted to them as it always was. From the group of these children, especially in the sixteenth century, came the best composers of polyphony, among them the greatest of all, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.” So we can see here at work an endorsement at the highest level of Church hierarchy.
In short, it seems clear to me that music pieces like this are essential models for all those who want to dedicate themselves to Church music, models that must always be kept in mind despite the diversity of contexts and times.
Follow
