Pange lingua gloriosi
Gregorian chant
Recording
Chœur grégorien de Paris, Xavier Chancerelle
- Album
- Liturgie de la semaine sainte
- Year
- 1990
- Length
- Period
- Gregorian chant
- Listen
Painting
Ugolino da Siena (Ugolino di Nerio)
The Last Supper, ca. 1325
The piece
Thomas Aquinas wrote this hymn for the office of Corpus Christi, the feast Pope Urban IV extended to the whole Church in 1264. Its third stanza sets the night of the Last Supper, when Christ, at table with the twelve, gave himself to them as food with his own hands.
The recording
Xavier Chancerelle directs the Chœur grégorien de Paris in this 1990 Erato recording of the Holy Week liturgy, which places the hymn among the chants of Maundy Thursday, when it is sung as the Sacrament is carried in procession after the evening Mass.
Other recordings
The monks of Fontgombault sing it on their 1981 Corpus Christi album, and Ensemble Organum under Marcel Pérès recorded it with Josquin's Missa Pange lingua for Harmonia Mundi in 1986.