O sacrum convivium! is a short offertorymotet for four-part mixed chorus by French composer Olivier Messiaen, setting "O sacrum convivium". It was composed and published in 1937.
Composition
The composition of the motet on a Latin text for the offertory of the mass was commissioned by a clergyman, Abbé Brun, and Messiaen presumably completed it within the first months of 1937, when he was age 29. He was a faithful Catholicfor life, and composed many works related to religious topics throughout his life. However, he never wrote any other sacred compositions meant to be performed in Catholic liturgy. Even though it is very likely that this piece was performed the year of its completion, the first known performance was early the following year, in a concert by Les Amis de l'Orgue, at Sainte-Trinité, Paris, on 17 February 1938, where Messiaen and other composers performed their own compositions. The score was published in June 1937, soon after its completion, by Éditions Durand in Paris, France. Even though the piece ultimately became popular, the initial 1000-copy printing took over sixteen years to sell. It was reprinted eighteen times between January 1954 and December 1991, with a total of over 138,000 copies in print.
Structure
This seven-minute, 36-bar piece is scored for four-part mixed chorus. Messiaen stated that four unspecified solo voices could also be a suitable scoring for the piece, along with an optional accompaniment of an organ, which is unusually flexible for Messiaen. Since the date of its first known performance, Messiaen performed the piece together with either Mme Bourdette-Vial or Lucile Darlay, Messiaen also accepted a different scoring variation: soprano and organ. Later in his life, however, in 1986, he listed the composition as being a work for "mixed chorus a cappella", and this is the way the composition is most performed today. The tempo indication at the beginning of the piece is Lent et expressif and performers are asked to counteighth notes, as no time signature is provided anywhere in the piece. For that reason, the amount of eighth notes per bar varies greatly along the piece. The text is taken from "O sacrum convivium", a Latin text celebrating the Blessed Sacrament. This was the first time Messiaen used a Latin text, instead of a text in French. A mainly tonal work, it is in F-sharp major, Messiaen's favorite tonality. As in Le banquet céleste, this tonality expresses the mystical experience of "superhuman love". However, some scholars have attempted to dispute the tonal aspect of the work and have offered different explanations to why Messiaen used a system that he later came to call "modes of limited transposition". Even though it is one of the composer's best-known works, he noted later that it was not representative of his compositional style.
