Text on the motet Memento homo by Diogo Dias Melgaz

I have recently published a brief text (in Portuguese) on the Portugueze online magazine InComunidade titled “Algumas notas sobre o motete Memento homo de Diogo Dias Melgaz”, in the issue 78 of last March.

The text focuses on an analysis of Melgaz’s motet from the perspective of its symbolic message. Melgaz was chapel master of Évora Cathedral between 1678 and his death in 1700. It was written for Ash Wednesday and it follows the text passage “memento homo quia pulvis est, et in pulverem reverteris”. A comparison is also made between the musical message Melgaz transmits and one of the most notable Portuguese writers of the seventeenth-century, the Jesuit Padre António Vieira. Vieira is author of three sermons with the mote Memento homo and it is interesting to notice how the subject of the good death and the mortal human existence is treated by both authors.

The text is available in Humanities Commons.