Locus iste in C Major

Music for the Catholic Church gained a powerful movement for reform in the mid-1860s, directly inspired by the meditative focus of Gregorian chant and the unadorned counterpoint cultivated in the 16th century by Palestrina and his contemporaries. Bruckner’s exquisitely beautiful setting for unaccompanied choir of the gradual “Locus iste” stands as a textbook example of what the so-called Cecilian reformists wished to hear; yet the motet’s apparent simplicity is belied by its sophisticated mix of chordal and contrapuntal writing, dynamic shadings, contrasts of choral texture and inventive variety, all delivered within the span of a clear-cut ABA form. The three-minute piece, written in Vienna in the summer of 1869, was intended for the service of dedication for part of the new cathedral at Linz, although its first performance was given a month later. Its text, from Genesis 28:16-17, concerns Jacob’s reflections upon waking from the dream in which he saw a ladder rising from earth to heaven. Bruckner supports his composition with a sustained bassline suggestive of the sure foundations of a sacred building.