The unaccompanied motet O sacrum convivium is an early work, revelling in a static chromaticism, which lends the work a fervently devotional quality. Though much of Messiaen’s music is overtly Christian in content, this is his only liturgical motet; the composer, with characteristic eccentricity, believed that plainsong was the perfect, and unsurpassable, music with which the liturgy should be adorned.

Matthew O’Donovan © 2010