It’s all getting very exciting here: the CDs have arrived in the warehouse, and we will have our hands on them very soon. So to celebrate, and to intrigue you all, here is another preview from the disc. This wonderful motet is for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the second part, the singers implore her: “Pray for the people, intervene for the clergy, intercede for all women consecrated to God.” If you listen carefully, you will notice that the people get three bars of music, the clergy six, and the nuns…. eighteen. If you listen even more carefully, you can hear the beginning of the chant “Pange lingua gloriosi” at the opening of the motet, divided among the voices (Prof Paula Higgins shared that insight with us!). The chant would have told the Virgin exactly which nuns were asking for her help: “Pange lingua” is the hymn for the feast of Corpus Christi, to which Suor Leonora’s convent, Corpus Domini, was dedicated.
And…. that gives me the excuse to share this lovely image, too: a page from St Catherine of Bologna’s breviary. St Catherine was one of the founding sisters of Corpus Domini, and she’s put her own face in the first letter of the hymn, gazing at the swaddled baby Jesus on the right hand side of the page. Awwww.
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