Sunday, March 30, 2008

Second Sunday of Easter, 2008




Barcelona in December 1991.
John Eliot Gardiner conducts the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir. This performance
was filmed at the Palau de la Musica Catalana.

I don't know if Mozart's Requiem is appropriate Easter Season music. But the Hostia is about passing from death to life, a suitable thought after Lent. Mozart's Requiem is arguably the finest piece of music ever composed, and like the Divine Comedy, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, King Lear, the Gettysburg Address . . . and the injured Kirk Gibson hitting a ninth inning home run in the 1st game of the 1988 World Series against the Oakland A's . . . a glimpse through the dark glass.
Hostias et preces tibi, Domine,
laudis offerimus.
Tu sucipe pro animabus illis,
quaram hodie memoriam facimus.
Fac eas, Domine,
de morte transire ad vitam,
Quam olim Abrahae promisisti
et semini ejus.

Sacrifices and prayers of praise, Lord,
we offer to You.
Receive them in behalf of those souls
we commemorate today.
And let them, Lord,
pass from death to life,
which was promised to Abraham
and his descendants.

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