The communion chant this weekend (as an option) has a melody that tends to linger in the head and heart for years and years. It is Qui Manducat, with the text: “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me: and I in him, saith the Lord.” I’m drawn to the clean phrases in this chant: flesh, blood, abide, with the longest melisma on the last phrase. The mode VI here provides a feeling of contentment and joy.
Here is a audio presentation of the above.
However, CPDL also carries two very beautiful polyphonic presentations of this text, both scored for male voices. The first is for TTBB by Claudio Merulo (1533-1604) and it so happens that it has just the same feeling of contentment and joy about it. It is not a difficult piece, given that it navigates the major scale up and down so effortlessly. From the CPDL page you can see the PDF and listen to the midi file.
The second is by Jacobus Gallus (1550-1591). It does a similar thing except for five male voices. Here is the PDF. (The midi file appears to be down).
Whether you sing the chant or one of these polyphonic presentations, you get a sense of what it means to say that a piece of music has a timeless quality to it. The chant is at least 1000 years old, and these polyphonic pieces are some 500 years old, and yet they sound fresh and beautiful, evocative of the text and thoroughly uplifting of the true liturgical spirit.
(P.S. just to underscore the point I’m making in the post just before this one, I can show you all this music and you can listen to it because all of this [text, sheet music, and audio] are part of the commons of the faith. Hence, this evangelization. Can anyone think of any good that would come to the faith by re-copyrighting these things?)