The motet is scored for an
unaccompanied mixed choir. It is in the
key of
C major and in
common time, has 48
bars and takes about three minutes to perform. The text concentrates on the concept of the sacred place, based on the Biblical story of
Jacob's Ladder, Bruckner structured the three lines of the text in an ABA
da capo form, closed by a
coda, with A containing the first line, framing the second and third. Peter Strasser suggests that the work reflects elements of architecture, such as in the symmetry of the da capo form and the use of
motifs like building blocks. A. Crawford Howie notes further that the work "begins with Mozartian phrases, but soon introduces characteristic Brucknerian progressions". The repeat of the first line, beginning one step higher, is marked , confirming "" higher and stronger, then repeating it softly. The
bass begins each "". Musicologist Anthony Carver notes here as in many of Bruckner's motets the "isolation of the bass part at structurally important points". The bass also begins the second line with a new rising motif, marked ; the upper voices follow in homophony. The line is repeated as a
sequence a whole tone higher, marked . After a pause of half a bar, the tenor alone begins in sudden the middle section on a repeated note, imitated by soprano and alto. Throughout the section, only the upper voices, without a bass foundation, sing in
chromaticism, beginning in undefined tonality. In a gradual
crescendo, the intensity is heightened, but only to . Iso Camartin notes in an article dedicated to the work in the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
das unanfechtbare Geheimnis (the irreproachable mystery) appears as
unfassbar (incomprehensible) and
beunruhigend (disturbing), After another rest of half a bar, the first line is repeated. It leads to a long general pause, achieved "by carefully measuring out five beats", == Recordings ==