Every year during commencement, a small choir sings Palestrina’s famous motet Sicut cervus. Most seniors sing along, many shedding tears. It’s a bittersweet moment, the end of a wonderful journey and the beginning of something new. Emotions are already high, but something about this beautiful motet that we study sophomore year reaches our souls with an immediacy that never seems to fail. Wherein lies its emotive power? This is but one of the many questions that we think about together in the music tutorial. We consider Palestrina’s careful melodies, how its melismas often paint the meaning of the Psalm’s words: “As the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.” And yet, there is something in this piece that remains elusive. It is clear in its message and serene in its movement. It is always balanced and always moving: four voices entering at consonant intervals, imitating each other, touching and fleeing each other in interesting dissonance. Is this what conveys a sense of yearning? But we also hear the emergence of the major third as something greater than a mere relation of two parts. Some of us seemed to be moved by the unexpected harmonic fullness the emerges throughout the motet. Some of us are moved by the horizontal movement of the voices, especially the ones we sing. We often agree that this piece depicts a kind of journey. There is closure: what starts as a medieval sounding two-tone consonance ends when the piece closes on the word “God” in a stable yet now seemingly overflowing triad. How does this description lead to an account of the moving power of Sicut cervus? Is it a satisfying account for why we are so moved?

— Obed Lira, Faculty Member