Ko Matsushita Ave verum corpus

For faithful Catholics it is the great mystery, and for those who are not Christian believers it is incomprehensible, possibly even off-putting – the mystery of the Eucharist. As far back as the late medieval period, the verse prayer "Ave verum" inimitably captures the special atmosphere of the contradiction between a terrible death and the redemption of mankind. Matsushita sets an early version of this prayer for the Eucharist in motet-like ABA form. A floating melody, alternating precisely between major and minor and first sung solo by all four voices in transposition, introduces the piece in a contemplative style. The scale is then altered in the counterpoint to a pure Dorian mode, contrasting in the middle section at the text “vere passum”, where Matsushita accompanies the increasingly wide-ranging melody and its chromatic, augmented intervals, by increasingly dissonant chordal shifts like a fauxbourdon. From this the tonal high point develops into an almost perfect F major, which then finally picks up on the opening motif for the added lines of text "O Jesu dulcis, o Jesu pie…" before ebbing away in F major. Voice range: S: des' – fis'' / A:g° - d'' / T: c° - as' / B: F - c'