In the liturgy for the dead, this antiphon is sung in procession on the way from the final blessing of the corpse in church to the graveyard where burial takes place. “In paradisum” is in the Mixolydian (G) mode. The special nature of this mode, which makes it different from the modern major mode, is heard twice in this melody, at cadences on the words “Chorus Angelorum” (line 4) and “quondam paupere” (line 5).

The way to experience “In paradisum” is to set this track on repeat and imagine yourself a medieval monk or nun who has lost a brother or sister. Candles have all been extinguished in the church after the Requiem Mass (so called because you have prayed for the soul’s eternal rest — in Latin, requiem aeternam). As the coffin is lifted up, the priest begins “In paradisum,” and then the entire religious community joins in. You sing this brief antiphon again and again, for as long as it takes the somber procession to reach the graveyard.

The melodic high point comes in line 5, where the text refers to Lazarus, the poor beggar in the Bible who went to heaven while a rich man went to hell — a point of identification for the mourners, all of whom had taken the vow of poverty, like the deceased. This haunting melodic figure was etched in the memory of the Middle Ages through an endless succession of last rites.

The beginning of “In paradisum” reveals a distant derivation from recitation: In the opening phrases notes of the same pitch — the relic of a reciting tone — are sung for most of the syllables of the text. Afterward the music grows more and more melodic, with many single syllables accommodating groups of two or three notes (or even five, at “ae-ter-nam”). These groups of notes on one syllable are called melismas, and on page 53 we will see much longer melismas in a chant genre that is less simple than the antiphon.