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Tomorrow we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord. The disciples
would remain deeply baffled when they witnessed the events of the
Passion. That is why the Lord led three of them, those who were to
accompany him in his agony in Gethsemane, to the top of Mount Tabor,
so that they may contemplate his glory. Christ manifested His divinity
to Peter, James, and John. Jesus, in the radiance of his divine
light, receives the testimony of Moses and Elijah. According to
Matthew: “Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high
mountain by themselves and was transfigured before them. Jesus’
face became resplendent like the sun and his clothes were white as
the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing
with him” (Matthew 17:1-3). This vision produced in the Apostles
uncontainable happiness; Peter expresses it in these words: “Lord, it
is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Matthew 17:4). St.
Mark, who takes up the catechesis of St. Peter himself, adds that he
did not know what he was saying (Mark 9:6). While he was still
speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from
the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom
I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matthew 17:5).
We at Neumz have chosen the offertory Gloria
et honore to celebrate this feast. The text taken
from Psalm 8:6-7 shows the Kingship of Christ: “You have crowned him
with glory and honour; you have made him the head of the work of your
hands.” In the Transfiguration, the Lord shows His divine nature:
Christ Jesus, the Only Begotten beloved of the Eternal Father,
manifests His glory before His holy apostles Peter, James, and John
with the testimony of the Law and the Prophets. And thus, shows His
majesty, making known the image of God, according to which man was
created, that corrupted in Adam was renewed by Christ. Therefore,
that body which is transfigured before the astonished eyes of the
Apostles is the body of Christ our brother, but it is also our body
destined for glory; the light that floods him is and will also be our
share of inheritance and splendour.
As for the melody, it is composed in mode I. At least the second
phrase is imbued with great devotional fervour as well as splendid
majesty. The prayerful one, contemplating the radiant divinity of the
Anointed One of the Father, sings with all his being, rejoicing in
such a scene and longing to be transfigured one day in the image of
Christ Jesus.
In the first phrase, “you crowned him with glory and with honour,”
the devotional character of mode VI, Fa as the fundamental and La as
the dominant, imposes itself, conferring that reverence full of
devotion that the one who prays sings together with the
Apostles. All of them are in awe of the gift that is given to
us: to witness the contemplation of the true nature of Christ. At the
beginning of the piece, the melody rises from the Fa to the La in a
quilismatic movement that is full of recollection, contemplation, and
of course, devotion. All are amplified by the quilisma and the
B-flat, which give a touch of intimacy, closeness, and tenderness.
From the La, the prayerful one looks up and sings with profound
reverence the honour that God bestows on his Only Begotten Son: in
the accent of honore, from
the La ascending to the Do, the melody settles in the high register,
between the La and the Do, for it is there, on the heights, that the
Eternal Father honours Jesus, triumphant in his human nature, and to
Christ, glorious in his divine nature. The composer captures this in
a double melodic turn, bivirga + climacus (Do-Do-Do Do-Si-La, a motif
that appears throughout this offertory as we shall see) followed by a
devotional torculus. The incise
concludes with a fervent melodic turn that returns the melody to the
register of the fundamental, the Fa. But it is only momentary, for
after the honours with which the Father clothes his Son, comes the
coronation. Jesus Christ, God-Man could symbolically be placed around
the Fa-La, with respect to God who works in heaven, the Do.
Therefore, in coronasti, the
melody develops insistently between the Fa and the La, emphasizing
over all the dominant, the La, which would symbolize Christ’s
elevation (note the initial salicus Fa-Sol-La
or the tenete of the pes
quadratus subbipunctis in the St. Gallen notation of
the Einsiedeln manuscript, or again, the tenete of
the elongated torculus in
the melodic turn in the accent of the word, or the episema in
the climacus).
All of this to prepare the coronation, that unique leap of a fifth in
this offertory, Fa-Do, at the end of coronasti:
the melody returns to the high Do, where God crowns his Son. The
melodic turn at the end of the word is reminiscent of the bivirga
+ climacus of honore, even
more so if we look at the beginning of the word eum,
a pronoun that in an obvious way refers to Christ. However, it is
worth underlining the composer’s genius in adding an extra note to
the climacus. Until then we had sung
Do-Si-La in honore,
Do-Si-Sol, in coronasti, and
now Do-Si-La-Sol, the only four-note climacus in
this piece. The grace of God is poured out in Christ being glorified.
In the second phrase, the majesty of the I mode appears. In et
constituisti, the melody returns to the heights, from the
La to the do, but this time it surpasses it rising to the high Re,
the fundamental of the mode. The one who prays sings with overflowing
joy of the heavenly reward that Christ receives from the Father: to
reign over all creation. The use of the letter f is very rare and
significant (frangor / frendor); it is
noteworthy. According to the Letter from Notker “the stammerer,” the
author of these significant letters, the meaning would be “that it
may be sung with a great clatter or as if gritting one’s teeth” (ut
cum fragore seu frendore feriatur efflagitat). Let us
sing then full of joy this heavenly reward granted to our Lord. From
the high Re, the melody descends to the La where it develops around
the Fa and the La, the same as in coronasti,
and rises again to conclude the word with the turn that characterizes
this piece, bivirga + climacus, the
musical seal of God the Father’s action. This incise finishes again
with the pronoun eum, the
parallelism with coronasti eum is
more than evident, but this time the melody descends with great
reverence to the low Re, for the first time in the piece. If the Do,
the high register corresponds to God in the heights, and the La-Fa to
Christ, God-Man, who moves between the divine and the human, then the
low register, Fa-Re, undoubtedly represents in this offertory the
earthly, the created in this world. Thus, in the following incise, super
opera, over the works, in super after
firmly emphasizing utilizing a bivirga this
time with the Fa, the melody moves gracefully into the accent of opera (note
the magnificent rhythmic contrast bivirga
distropha in the change of syllable at the end of super and
the beginning of opera) before
reverently descending to the Re with a masterful leap of a fourth and
then falling to the low Do in the posttonic syllables. The incise
concludes in a sublime melodic elevation, with another beautiful leap
of a fourth, Do-Fa, and a quilismatic movement, the second one of the
piece that essentially echoes the incipit:
Fa-Sol-La. In manuum tuarum, from
your hands, echoes of this piece continue to be heard. On this
occasion, in manuum the
melodic turn of the accent of honore reappears,
the melody rises to the Do, they are the hands of God; and in tuarum, the
melodic turn of the accent of constituisti,
Fa-Sol-La La-Sol, a sort of semantic and melodic synthesis of the
spiritual essence of this offertory: God’s hand, by divine will,
Christ has been glorified and crowned with the accolade of having
power over Creation, that is the manifestation of his kingship, of
his nature as God-Man.
This masterful composition ends with the vocative, Domine,
Lord, added to the psalmic text. The prayerful one displays immense
reverence and fervour in the accent of the words. The melodic
movement develops around the Fa with two symmetrical pes
subbipunctis, separated by an oriscus at
the beginning of the melisma: Sol-Si-La-Sol Sol-Fa-La-Sol-Fa. After
that, the melody settles on the Fa, and after a slight inclination on
the high Re, it settles on the Fa amplified by a tristropha,
the only one in the piece. Undoubtedly, the Fa and the Do are this
piece’s true protagonists. The final cadence is proof of this, full
of reverence, with a bivirga on the Fa, the letter x, exspectare,
wait, which separates it from a virga with episema on
the Fa, the height of melodic insistence in a certain way, to end in
a sublime bow with a leap of a fourth, Sol-Re. The prayerful one
sings piously, fervently, admiring the transfiguration of Jesus and
longing, in turn, to be transfigured as well. The Lord, Our God, is
the author of the transfiguration of His Son, it is He who raises us
and invites us to unite ourselves to Him by discovering our true
nature, beyond the merely human.
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