Communion music
For Corpus Christi, we shall be listening to “O Sacrum Convivium”, by Olivier Messiaen, performed by The Cambridge Singers.
Composed in 1937, this four-part motet sets a text (“O sacred banquet”), commonly attributed to the great 13th-century philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas, in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. The music of Messiaen, one of the major composers of the last century as well as an eminent organist and teacher, is informed by his deep Catholic devotion, but this is his only work intended to be performed as part of the liturgy; perhaps for that reason it is in a more conservative style than most of his writing.