Key Phrygian mode Occasion Corpus Christi Language Latin | Catalogue WAB 33 Text Pange lingua | |
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Composed 31 January 1868 (1868-01-31): Linz | ||
Pange lingua (Tell, my tongue), WAB 33, is a sacred motet composed by Anton Bruckner in 1868. It is a setting of the Latin hymn Pange lingua for the celebration of Corpus Christi.
Contents
History
Bruckner composed the motet on 31 January 1868 at the end of his stay in Linz. Bruckner’s original intention was to have it performed at the same time as the first performance of his Mass in E minor for the dedication of the votive chapel in Linz, the first part of the New Cathedral. Bruckner heard his work only twenty years later. The first performance occurred on 18 August 1890 (the emperor's birthday) in the Stadtpfarrkiche of Steyer.
Franz Xaver Witt was a leader of the Cecilian Movement, aiming to restore Catholic church music "to the purity and comparative simplicity of the Palestrinian style". In 1885 he asked Bruckner for a composition to be included in Musica sacra (Regensburg), the movement's journal, in which he issued a transcription of the motet. Witt modified the alto part without Bruckner's agreement, removing "some of the work's more daring harmonies". Ten years later, in 1895, the motet was published in its original setting by Johann Groß, Innsbruck. The motet, which Bruckner called his Lieblings-Tantum ergo (favourite Tantum ergo), is put in Band XXI/22 of the Gesamtausgabe.
Music
The work is a setting of 38 bars in Phrygian mode of the first and last two verses (Tantum ergo) of the Pange lingua for mixed choir a cappella. A 3-bar Amen was added later.
The work, which is composed in the old church mode, begins in unison and evolves via an empty fifth to perfect chords. Max Auer commented: The whole work has much mystic atmosphere and, despite its great simplicity, I would regard it as one of Bruckner's best sacred compositions ("Das ganze Stück ist voll mystischer Stimmung und ich möchte es trotz seiner großen Einfachheit zu den besten von Bruckners kirchlichen Chorwerken zählen").
Selected discography
The first recording occurred in 1965:
A selection among the about 30 recordings of the work: