Lamentations of Jeremiah

Description by Anne Feeney

''Relatively little of Emilio de' Cavalieri's music survives, a source of great frustration for scholars and listeners, considering his primary role in establishing monody, a response to Renaissance-style polyphony, which had lost or lacked, according to the champions of the new music, the power to illuminate speech and affect the listeners' emotions. This particular work survived only in a copy made sometime around 1600, shortly before the composer's death, and is the only existing example of his church writing, though the work for which he is best-known, the Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo, is spiritual in nature.''

His settings (which according to modern scholarship were probably not written by the historical Jeremiah, but are so commonly attributed to him that the name still sticks), like many such Lamentations'', but unlike the majority of church music, include the structural notations in the settings. However, in the translation to Latin and the arrangement for church services, much of the original structural complexity of the text is lost, and de' Cavalieri made no attempt to recreate them within his music, which responds more to the meaning of the text and the images it creates. Even the concluding section to the readings ("lectio"), which uses the same text, has slight variations in the setting each time it recurs.''

''It consists of three groups of three readings, the lectio, and three corresponding responses, the responsoria, which were used for the matin (morning) services during the last three days of Holy Week, the week before Easter. The texts, among the most dramatic and evocative in the Bible, lament the defeat of Judah and destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and in the Christian liturgy, are used as a foreshadowing of Jesus' death. They are filled with mournful imagery of loss, cruelty, and destruction.''

Unsurprisingly, Lamentations ''relies heavily on the use of a solo voice with basso continuo, though it also uses polyphonic devices. Even five-voice madrigal-like counterpoint passages on the settings of the names of the original Hebrew letters in the lectio (though since these are not part of the text per se, this isn't a real violation of his dramatic principles); the solo voices are often used to introduce a section of the text, with polyphony used to repeat and emphasize the phrases, as in the "filia populi mei" section, in which the word "crudelis" is first sung by the tenor, then repeated by the soprano for emphasis, and then the two voices weave together in a mournful duet-like concluding passage. At other times, he uses duets instead of solo voices to introduce the passages, especially in the Responsoria, but with the same emphasis on expressiveness and using close-knit harmonies that do not obscure the text. The effect throughout is musically graceful and strongly moving, with a sense of direct and natural expression.''

Source

 * Allmusic.com/Lamentations of Jeremiah for Chorus

Links

 * Lamentations of Jeremiah sample