The Spanish Pange lingua in Mode V known only on the Iberian peninsula has been set repeatedly by Spanish keyboard composers, revealing the change of styles and techniques over three centuries. Early settings of the hymn, including ten by Antonio de Cabezón, range from ornamented intabulations to works written in an idiomatic instrumental style. Seventeenth-century settings by Manuel Rodrigues Coelho and Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia often use a three-part texture with a slow-moving melody surrounded by faster figuration. The sixty settings by Juan Cabanilles vary from pieces using simple rhythmic motives to more complex pieces with dense imitation. In a tiento by Cabanilles, the hymn tune begins buried in the tenor before it migrates to the other voices, gradually exposing the basis of the composition. In a setting by Vincente Rodríguez, the lower voices are registered separately on the organ to oppose the treble parts. A more fugal treatment of the hymn can be seen in José Lidón's setting from the eighteenth century, where motives derived from the hymn are developed as subjects of a large fugue. Although the use of the hymn declined by the nineteenth century, pianistic settings by Hilarión Eslava and Nicolás Ledsma are found in an anthology of organ music from 1854. The short survey of keyboard settings of the hymn shows a wide spectrum of styles: intabulations in ricercar style, divided-register pieces, sophisticated fugues, and nineteenth-century pianistic styles.

Works: Cabezón: Pange lingua (67); Heredia: La reina de los Pange linguas (68); Cabanilles: Tiento de Pange lingua (68); Rodríguez: Pange lingua de mano izquierda (68); Lidón: Fuga sobre el Pange lingua (69).

Sources: Pange lingua from the Liber Processionarius Regularis Observantiae Ordinis Cisterciensis, 1569 (66).

Index Classifications: 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s

Contributed by: Jir Shin Boey