Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Pange Lingua

I started working on this song / recording a few weeks ago. Again, it's another project that I've started and I don't know where it's headed.

A few notable aspects of this one:

  • It's a song. Like, with words and stuff.
  • It's got a steady pulse and chords and other trappings of "song" in the common usage of the term. It's got loud guitars and even a short shred-y solo.
  • Text is from a latin hymn. It's one that you encounter during music history class because the plain chant became the basis of various polyphonic pieces... so you run into it first as chant, then as organum, and eventually as the basis for a mass by Josquin. I didn't use any of that music, though. Just swiped the first three lines of the text:
Pange lingua gloriosi
Corporis mysterium
Sanguinisque pretiosi

in English:
Sing, my tongue
The mystery of the glorious body
And the precious blood.
I tried to take this religious text out of context and get at the strictly physical / sensual side of things. That's probably why I'm stuck and don't know where it's headed - I'm not sure what comes next. Maybe a related (musically) song with original or found text? Maybe something that has spirituality and sex and love all tangled up nicely. If it's going to be a found text, I need something public domain. Preferably really old. But then I don't want something that sounds stilted, since I want it to be visceral and sensual. Or maybe I get away from text altogether and just write some instrumental music?

Maybe I just leave it in the "incubator" for a while. Suggestions welcome.

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