Panis quem ego dedero, caro mea est pro saeculi vita.
The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.
The communion chant for this weekend, Panis quem ego, continues to reflect upon the Bread of Life Discourses in John 6. Like last weekend, the entire lectionary is Eucharistic. Elijah’s hearth cake, like Moses’ manna, foreshadows this Bread, where we will “taste and see the goodness of the Lord”1.
In the Vatican edition, the opening interval is an ascending fourth, from RE to SOL. The Graduale Novum instead notates an ascending second, from FA to SOL.2 I agree with this editorial decision. Ascending fourth or fifth incipit patterns in mode I are notated in St. Gall by a pes. Here, two tractuli are written instead. Furthermore, a similar melodic pattern is demonstrated in the word sæculi, where two ascending tractuli notate a half step from MI to FA. An ascending pes here would indicate a larger interval. In both instances, the tractuli precede ornamental notes delaying resolution to the three-note ascending patterns: FA-SOL-LA or MI-FA-SOL. The ornamentation on panis is more ornate since LA is the dominant of mode I.
There is a beautiful intricacy in the textual division and the chant modality. The text up to mea est is a contained, cohesive thought (“the bread that I will give is my flesh”) and is reflected by ending on the final, RE. However, we are invited further into the mystery with the tag, “for the life of the world.” The phrase on pro begins on a relatively unstable note, SOL, thus linking both ideas together. A type of binary form is created in the process. The melodic shape of the light melisma on mea is parallel to vita, thus linking Jesus Himself with life. The melisma on vita is especially reminiscent of the acrobatic melismas in the gnarly offertory, Jubilate Deo. As notated in St. Gall, I added the missing tractulus in the Vatican edition3, thus re-articulating RE to round off the common cadential formula on vita.
- Ps 34: 9a, 1997, ICEL. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081124.cfm. Accessed 9 August 2024. ↩︎
- Graduale Novum I: De Domenicis et Festis. Regensburg: ConBrio Verlagsgesellschaft, 2011, in cooperation with the Liberia Editrice Vaticana, pg. 309. ↩︎
- E 121, Graduale, Panis quem ego, pg. 112. https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/sbe/0121/112. Accessed 9 August 2024. ↩︎
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