Proclaimed before the Gospel on the Feast of Corpus Christi, Lauda Sion is one of the four medieval sequences that remain in annual use. These magnitudinous pillars of the liturgical calendar carry with them the voices of our ancestors; centuries of the faithful singing the same chant and verse. St Thomas Aquinas wrote Lauda Sion in the 13th century, at the behest of Pope Urban IV. It is most commonly sung to plainsong, but there are a great number of composed versions.
In 1846, Felix Mendelssohn was commissioned to set the hymn to mark the 600th anniversary of the first local celebration of Corpus Christi, which took place in Liège. At the time, Mendelssohn was in the thick of composing his oratorio Elijah, and you can certainly hear similarities. In eight movements for soloists, chorus and orchestra, it is a work worthy of greater recognition.
