Holy Saturday: Recessit Pastor Noster ("Our Shepherd is Departed")

From the YouTube link: "Paweł Łukaszewski's haunting Recessit Pastor Noster is sung in Ely Cathedral's medieval Lady Chapel to great effect."



Recessit Pastor Noster is the fourth Tenebrae Responsory for Holy Saturday.  CPDL gives us the text:

Recessit pastor noster fons aquae vivae
ad cuius transitum sol obscuratus est:
Nam et ille captus est, qui captivum tenebat primum hominem:
hodie portas mortis et seras pariter Salvator noster disrupit.
Verse: Destruxit quidem claustra inferni
et subvertit potentias diaboli.
{Nam et ille…]

Alternative verse
Ante cuius conspectum mors fugit,
Ad cuius vocem mortui resurgent:
Videntes autem eum portae mortis confractae sunt.


Our Shepherd is departed, the fount of living water,
At whose passing the sun was darkened,
For even he was made captive who was holding captive the first man.
Today the gates of death and their bars as well our Savior has destroyed.
Verse: Indeed He has destroyed the strongholds of the underworld
And he has overthrown the powers of the devil.
[For even he…]

Alternative verse
Before whose presence death flees
At whose voice the dead will be raised;
And seeing him the gates of death are broken.

Translation by Paul Pascal

From the Wikipedia entry on Paweł Łukaszewski:

Paweł Łukaszewski is a Polish composer of choral music. He has won seven prestigious Fryderyk Awards. According to David Wordsworth, Łukaszewski is the best-known Polish composer of his generation in and out of Poland "by far" (Wordsworth 2013, p. 50).