[7.1ch] Lilium ("Elfenlied" Opening Theme)

"Lilium" is the hymnal-like opening theme for the Elfenlied anime, where it serves an important role in several episodes.
The lyrics are based around the Biblical passages in Psalms and the Epistle of James, as well as the Renaissance hymn "Ave Mundi Spes Maria", which is sung in Latin. The opening and full version is performed by Kumiko Noma, the song itself was composed by MOKA, a two-person musician group that consists of Yukio Kondo and Kayo Konishi, who jointly arranged the lyrics and composed it.

The anime director Kanbe made a sole request to MOKA that the opening theme should be a religious music and this was the background why MOKA chose the lyrics from the Biblical texts etc.

Kayo Konishi explains the reason why MOKA chose Latin lyrics as follows: While she studied at a mission school, she sang hymns in Latin and she liked the sounds that the language had -- so she wanted to make the opening theme "Lilium" sound like a contemporary Gregorian hymn.

(I'm still uncertain about the genre of this piece. Maybe someone could suggest a more fitting genre name than "Modern Gregorian".)

~~~

Lyrics:

Os iusti meditabitur sapientiam
et lingua eius loquetur indicium.

Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem.
Quoniam cum probatus fuerit,
accipiet coronam vitae.

Kyrie, ignis divine, eleison!

O quam sancta,
quam serena,
quam benigna,
quam amoena!

O castitas lilium

~~~

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:
- URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/7P75VbefduCmIfmr
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.