Pange Lingua is based on two passages from Josquin's Missa Pange Lingua. The material is overlaid against itself in canonic fashion, reminiscent of methods Josquin himself used. In this case however, since it is the entire texture being overlaid and not single voices, the music becomes significantly denser and more complex (at least superficially). Over the course of the piece, various combinations of 2, 3, and 4 of these “full texture voices” are presented, leading to a total of up to 16 single voices. In this piece, the Agnus Dei precedes the Credo (for purely musical reasons).



There is also an extended tape version containing all the mass “movements” (in the ordinary order, this time), intended to be split up so that unrelated pieces on the program are inserted in between, reflecting a little the context mass “movements” were originally performed in.

Premiered by Ensemble 96 in Oslo.