Recessit Pastor Noster – today’s piece, written for a Tenebrae service for Holy Saturday, mourns the death of the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for his sheep. After the sorrow of the Cross, the Church enters into the silence of Holy Saturday. On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord’s tomb in prayer and fasting, meditating on his Passion and Death and on his Descent into Hell, and awaiting his Resurrection. The play between major and minor tonalities throughout this piece serve as a musical commentary on the interplay between darkness and light. The darkness has seemingly triumphed: Jesus lies in the tomb; however, he who is the Light of the world has promised that he will not abandon us (cf. Jn 9:5 and 14:18). “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).
Recessit Pastor Noster – Our Shepherd Has Departed – is the thirteenth responsorial for Holy Week. Christ, the Shepherd of mankind, has died. Our Savior hangs dead on the Cross and the sun has darkened to mark the mourning of creation’s God. Mankind is without its Messiah, yet it is through His death that our salvation is obtained. The tyranny of death and Satan is shattered by the infinitely precious sacrifice of Calvary. Recessit Pastor Noster was composed by Fr. Tomás Luis de Victoria as part of his setting of the Tenebrae service in 1585.
Born in 1968 in Poland, Pawel Lukaszewski is one of the younger generation of Polish composers specialising in sacred and choral music. He is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin Music in Warsaw. His setting of the Tenebrae includes the ‘Recessit Pastor Noster’. There is some comfort for the listener here, for despite the betrayal and imminent fate of the Lord, the power of evil has been destroyed. There are two opposing elements. First, a quasi-GregorianMode 1 cantabile melody which is raised twice by a semitone step, accompanied by a vocalised, off-beat accompaniment which could be compared to a piano-accompaniment for a song by Schumann or Fauré. The battle of good and evil at the gates of hell is represented by unrelenting dissonances in rhythmic fractions which might suggest that weapon of the Old Testament referred to in psalm 149: a two-edged sword.
