MatthiasRat here!

Today I would like to share with you something special to me. Unlike previous suggestions, this one is short (only forty-six measures long), but it is also one of the most sublimely beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. The high point of my singing career was to sing this piece, Mozart's Ave Verum corpus, in a version for SAB choir. Never have I touched anything else as beautiful or that stirred my soul with such longing and joy.

Written only six months before his unfortunate death, Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus is written for SATB choir, Strings, and Organ. It is a Motet in D Major, though its melodic and harmonic language is very advanced, traversing several different key groups and using all twelve tones of the chromatic scale without once sounding out of place. The hymn, "Ave Verum Corpus", is a meditation on the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, a refelction of Mozart's deep faith; but you do not need to share it to be swept up by the beauty of this work.

If I had but five minutes left to live, I would spend it in prayer with this piece.

Here is a recording conducted by the great Leonard Bernstein (who would also die only six months after this recording): https://youtu.be/6KUDs8KJc_c

The score for this work is freely available online: http://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/nma.....l=1&p1=261

Now listen, close your eyes, and be carried into Beauty itself! Thank you, Mozart!

Dominus vobiscum