Vexilla Regis - References in Later Works

References in Later Works

Gounod took a very plain melody based on the chant as the subject of his "March to Calvary" in the "Redemption", in which the chorus sings the text at first very slowly and then, after an interval, fortissimo.

Franz Liszt wrote a piece for solo piano, Vexilla regis prodeunt, S185, and the pentatonal theme is used throughout Via Crucis (The 14 stations of the Cross), S504a.

In Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy, Virgilius introduces Lucifer with the Latin phrase Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, Chapter V, in Stephen's discussion of his aesthetic theory.

Gustav Holst used both the words and the plainchant melody of Vexilla regis in his Hymn of Jesus (1917).

Read more about this topic:  Vexilla Regis

Famous quotes containing the word works:

    The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.
    Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)