Alleluia - Pascha nostrum

Alleluia – Pascha nostrum is a collaborative track recorded by sitarist Nishat Khan and the early music vocal ensemble Ensemble Gilles Binchois. The composition appears as the opening track on the album Meeting of Angels, released on May 1996 under the Italian label Amiata Records. The piece spans 5 minutes and 36 seconds and exemplifies a fusion of North Indian classical music with Gregorian chant traditions.

The album Meeting of Angels emerged from a cross-cultural project initiated by Dominique Vellard, founder and director of Ensemble Gilles Binchois. Vellard conceived the work as a dialogue between medieval European sacred music and Hindustani classical improvisation. Khan contributed sitar performances, while the ensemble provided vocal interpretations of Latin liturgical texts. The track Alleluia – Pascha nostrum adapts the Easter antiphon from the Roman Gradual, blending it with raga-based melodic elaborations.

Amiata Records issued the album in CD format, marking one of the earliest documented collaborations between a Hindustani instrumentalist and a Western early music group. The recording sessions took place in France, though specific studio details remain undocumented in available sources. The album’s liner notes highlight the improvisational interplay between Khan’s sitar and the ensemble’s polyphonic vocals, though no formal score or arrangement credits are publicly attributed.

Critical reception of Meeting of Angels noted its experimental approach to sacred music fusion, though commercial performance data is not widely recorded. The track Alleluia – Pascha nostrum served as a thematic anchor for the album, framing subsequent pieces that explored similar intersections of liturgical and classical Indian repertoires. No live performances or alternate versions of the track are verified in archival records.