Tota pulchra es is a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

prayer written in the fourth century. The title means "You are completely beautiful" (referring to the Virgin Mary). It speaks of her

immaculate conception The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth w ...

. Some of its verses are used as antiphons for the

Feast of the Immaculate Conception The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, also called Immaculate Conception Day, celebrates the sinless lifespan and Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8 December, nine months before the feast of the Nativity of Mary, celebr ...

. It takes some text from the book of Judith, and other text from Song of Songs, specifically 4:7. Composers to set the prayer to music include Robert Schumann, Anton Bruckner, Pablo Casals,

Maurice Duruflé Maurice Gustave Duruflé (; 11 January 1902 – 16 June 1986) was a French composer, organist, musicologist, and teacher. Life and career Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure in 1902. He became a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School fr ...

Guillaume du Fay Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397(?) – 27 November 1474) was a French composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and repr ...

, Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki,

Heinrich Isaac Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Netherlandish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin des ...

James MacMillan Sir James Loy MacMillan, (born 16 July 1959) is a Scottish classical composer and conductor. Early life MacMillan was born at Kilwinning, in North Ayrshire, but lived in the East Ayrshire town of Cumnock until 1977. His father is James MacMi ...

. and

Ola Gjeilo Ola Gjeilo ( , ; born May 5, 1978) is a Norwegian composer and pianist, living in the United States. Tota pulchra

Music

set the prayer in Latin as No. 2 of his '' Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens''.

References

External links

* {{cite video , url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d391vKzANfM , title = Tota pulchra es - Marian hymn (with Gregorian square notation) , language = la , website = Youtube , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180316025842/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d391vKzANfM , archive-date = March 16, 2018 , url-status = live Roman Catholic prayers Marian devotions