Last night was our fortnightly choir practice; something I really look forward to and as close to spiritual as this avowed Darwinist will ever get. We’ve been working on a short piece called “Adoro Te Devote” linked here. The recording –done inside a church most likely- is not the best. Actually, it sounds like the choir is inside a sewer pipe. No matter.
The all-knowing Wikipedia tells me…
“Adoro te devote” is a Eucharistic hymn written by Thomas Aquinas. It is one of the five Eucharistic hymns, which were composed and set to music for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, instituted in 1264 by Pope Urban IV as a Solemnity for the entire Roman Catholic Church… The opening line literally translated means “I devoutly adore you, o hidden Deity”
Sounds quite grandly religious when you put it like that doesn’t it?
On a more mundane level, the opening three notes of the main theme are the same as the Beatles’ song Ob La Di Ob La Da. A bit slower, and a bit more ethereal, but the same. A climbing pattern of third intervals.
Our teacher Colleen uses musical cognates like Ob La Di to help the less-musical members of our choir improve their sight reading skills; essentially she turns it into an exercise in pattern recognition. And we all know that a pattern is easier to remember than being told it’s another melodic theme based on opening climbing thirds.