SKU: CA.964420

ISBN 9790007143497. Text language: Latin.

The aged Simeon takes the new-born Jesus in his arms, recognises his significance and celebrates this moment in a paean of praise as the fulfilment of his life. In Matsushita's motet this song of praise, the nunc dimittis, stands at the centre of the composition. Here, the triad of C-F sharp-G, used for the word hodie - today at the beginning, symbolically combines with a Gregorian-like motif, revolving around the central note of B flat in whole-tone movement, and which is used to represent the Virgin Mary. The work ends with a mystical wash of sound, a whole-tone cluster which emerges from the aleatorically repeated basic motifs of the work, and fades away to nothing.