Tomorrow we celebrate the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time. To celebrate this Sunday, we have chosen the chant of the Gradual Responsory Domine Dominus noster. The text of this piece is taken from Psalm 8 which sings of God's greatness manifested in his work. Verse 2 is a sort of summary of the whole psalm: how can we not sing of the greatness of the Lord when we contemplate nature in the splendour of summer, when the earth is full of fruit and the heavens are full of light, day and night, and the power of him who made them is present everywhere?

As for the melody, composed in mode 5, it is rather centonized, that is, it contains numerous melodic formulas typical of Graduals in this mode, but it is nonetheless a magnificent chant praising the greatness of the Creator.

The melodic movement develops around the fundamental, the F degree, in an atmosphere of happy peace, with a very marked shade of tenderness that surrounds the incipit Domine Dominus noster (Lord, our Lord) where the soul is felt in an intimate relationship of love with its Creator. A beautiful movement of admiration rises in quam admirabile, reaching the dominant of the mode, the C, adorning it on the D, the melodic summit of the body of the responsory. There is nothing abrupt about it, it is not a cry, it is an exclamation. It comes from the depths of a soul that knows what it is singing and that puts all its love and admiration into singing it. This impulse, so restrained, is going to settle in nomen tuum in a melodic descent with softness that settles around the G before launching itself with verve again towards the C in universa terra. In this last part before reaching the verse, there are melodic turns in which the soul delights, such as the two chiasmatic movements and which lead the melody from C to F and the series of two scandicus (F-A-C), to then settle into a cadential formula, rather gentle, characteristic of this mode 5.

The melody is lighter, but the expression is the same as in the body of the Gradual Responsory. The melody starts from the fundamental F, but the soul, with its gaze fixed on the splendour of Heaven, allows itself to be carried away by contemplation in quoniam elevata est; the melody settles in the high register; the soul enjoys what it sees and what it knows is beyond what its eyes discover. Here, we reach the E, the melodic summit of the whole piece with melodic turns of great beauty, typical of this mode 5. Its moving gratitude then finds, in the beautiful cadenza, the tenderness and depth that are proper to it. At magnificentia tua, the melody descends delicately from the high register, from the dominant C to the fundamental F to settle briefly with a cadential formula, before beginning a magnificent final cadenza at super caelos, where the melody takes a wide route, a back and forth between the F and the unison developments in the C.