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Welcome to Harmonia . . . I’m Angela Mariani. Sometimes we need a good cry. Music can provide a sonic environment for expressing grief. Singing texts of sorrow can bring people together and provide comfort during times of mourning. This hour, we’ll explore mourning practices through musical settings of the Book of Lamentations. Many of these settings were a part of holiday traditions—for the Jewish traditions surrounding Tisha b’Av and during parts of the Christian Holy Week. Plus, our featured recording is Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsoria, Feria quinta sung by Les Arts Florissants.
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MUSIC TRACK
The flowering of Renaissance choral music
Pro Cantione Antiqua London, Bruno Turner
Deutsche Grammophon 2007 / 00028944566727
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Tr.74 Motet: Super flumina Babylonis (4:42)
We heard Pro Cantione Antiqua London directed by Bruno Turner performing Palestrina’s motet Super flumina Babylonis. The motet’s text draws from Psalm 137, which describes the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon. / The work was published in Palestrina’s second book of 4-part motets / in Venice in 1584 by prolific publisher Antonio Gardano. / It was one of seven books of motets published in the composer’s lifetime.
Megillat Eikha,[Meh-ghee-LAHT ehy-KHAH] or the Book of Lamentations, is one of several texts used in communal mourning in Jewish traditions. It is read during TiSHA b’Av (the 9th of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar), a time commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and again in 70 CE. Grief after destruction of the First Temple and the following exile to Babylonia is also described in Psalm 137, Al nahaROT bavel, often translated as By the Waters of Babylon. It is commonly recited on the eve of Tisha b’Av. In English, the text begins:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion.
There on the poplars we hung up our lyres,
for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement:
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
These lines, talking about refraining from music making, are set by composers from different traditions using musical devices signifying lament and sadness familiar to them.
MUSIC TRACK
The songs of Solomon: sacred vocal works in Hebrew
Corvina Consort
Hungaroton 2006 / HCD32350
Salamone Rossi
Tr.22 Psalm 137, "By the rivers of Babylon" (2:20)
MUSIC TRACK
La rocque 'n' roll: popular music of renaissance France
The Baltimore Consort
Dorian Sono Luminus 1993 / DOR-90177
Bourgeois, Loys / Goudimel, Claude / Strassbourg Psalter
Tr.15 Estans assis aux rives aquatiques (4:37)
MUSIC TRACK
Evening song: 16th-century songs, hymns & Psalms from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Ensemble Morgaine
Ayros 2020 / 5902768283112
Mikołaj Gomółka
Tr.1 Gomółka: Psalm 137, "Super flumina Babilonis" (By the Rivers of Babylon) (4:41)
Three settings of Psalm 137 in three different languages. The first in Hebrew composed by a 17th century composer named Salamone Rossi, performed by Corvina Consort. The second in French from the Strassbourg Psalter by Loys Bourgeois, performed by the Baltimore Consort. Finally, a setting in Latin by 16th-century Polish-composer Mikołaj Gomółka recorded by Ensemble Morgaine.
Megillat Eikha gets its Hebrew name from the first word of its first chapter, Eikha, meaning how but sometimes translated as Alas!, an expression of grief and distress. The book is chanted in a special trope (or musical formula) during Tisha b’Av alongside medieval elegy texts called kinot.
While Eikha features a lot of sorrow, anger, and destruction on both personal and communal levels, there are moments of hope throughout. Sephardic kinot continue these hopeful messages with themes of the promise of a better future. One such kinah, Bore ad ana, uses a dove as a metaphor for the Jewish people and stresses hope as a part of collective grief that is remembered on this day.
MUSIC TRACK
Jewish voices in the New World: chants and prayers from the American colonial era
Ira L. Rohde, Schola Hebraeica, Neil Levin, The New London Children's Choir
Naxos 2003 / 8.559411
Traditional (Sephardic Trope Tradition)
Tr.3 Eikha - Book of Lamentations excerpt: 2:1-5 (2:41)
Traditional
Tr.10 Bore Ad Ana (5:10)
Rabbi-Hazzan Ira L. Rohde chanting an excerpt from chapter 2 of Eikha - Book of Lamentations followed by a kinah, Bore Ad Ana, sung by Schola Hebraeica.
You’re listening to Harmonia . . . I’m Angela Mariani.
Mid Break Music Bed:
Gřgoire Brayssing: Complete music for Renaissance guitar
Federico Rossignoli
Brilliant Classics 2022 / BC96448
Gřgoire Brayssing
Tr.12 Super flumina Babylonis (:59)
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Welcome back… this hour we’re listening to music of lament through settings of the Book of Lamentations.
The Book of Lamentations, commonly attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, contains five chapters. All but the last chapter are written as acrostics— poems where the first letter of each line can be read as its own meaning. Some acrostics spell words or sentences. In the Book of Lamentations, the pattern is the Hebrew alphabet. Jewish musical settings of the text preserve this acrostic naturally by maintaining the Hebrew text. But Renaissance composers writing in Christian contexts primarily wrote church music in Latin or, after the Reformation, in European vernacular languages -- which destroyed the original acrostic. In order to keep the text in a common church language and preserve the acrostic, a practice developed to set the name of the Hebrew letter as the first word, then proceed with the Latin translation. In the following setting by de Orto, we’ll hear the incipit identifying the text followed by Aleph (the first letter), then a Latin translation of line one, then Bet (the second letter) followed by a Latin translation of line two.
MUSIC TRACK
Lamentations de la Renaissance
Huelgas-Ensemble; Paul van Nevel, conductor.
Harmonia Mundi 1999 / HMC901682DI
Marbriano de Orto
Lamentatio Jeremie prophete (selections)
Tr.6 Incipit-Aleph (3:37)
Tr.7 Beth (2:50)
Tr.8 Ghimel (4:59)
Paul van Nevel conducted the Huelgas-Ensemble in a performance of music from Lamentatio Jeremie prophete by Marbriano de Orto from the early 16th century. We heard the first three lines, which correspond with the first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph-Bet-Gimel.
The first chapter of the Book of Lamentations mourns the fallen state of Jerusalem, describing the city as lonely and a widow. Verse 4 begins: [quote] “Zion’s roads are in mourning, empty of festival pilgrims; all her gates are deserted. Her priests sigh, Her Maidens are unhappy—She is utterly disconsolate!” The word for road or path in Hebrew, DErekh, begins with the letter dalet. We’ll hear the continuation of this acrostic in polyphonic setting with rich harmonies by 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis.
MUSIC TRACK
Byrd, Tallis: English Renaissance
King’s Singers
RCA Victor 1995 / 090266800421
Thomas Tallis
Lamentations of Jeremiah (selections)
Tr.14 Daleth (3:07)
Tr.15 Hey (2:44)
The King’s Singers performed excerpts from The Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis. They sang the Dalet and Hey verses, the fourth and fifth characters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Musical settings of the Book of Lamentations are used in several ways during Christian Holy Week in different traditions. One occasion is the Tenebrae service, [which features candles to emphasize the idea of tenebrae or darkness]. Our featured recording this hour is the 2023 harmonia mundi release Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsoria, Feria quinta by the ensemble Les Arts Florissants led by Paul Agnew. The music was written for a Holy Week Day 5 service. Paul Agnew describes the dusk service as: [quote] “announced by the beating of wooden sticks . . . The service would then proceed with texts in groups of three; a psalm, a reading, and a ‘response’. After each of these one of nine candles would be extinguished leading towards the near darkness of ‘tenebrae’ at the end of the service.” End quote
MUSIC TRACK
Gesualdo: Tenebrae responsaria, Feria quinta
Les Arts Florissants Ensemble; Paul Agnew
Harmonia Mundi 2023 / HAF8905363DI
Carlo Gesualdo
Tenebrae responsaria (excerpts)
Tr.4 Vau - Et egressus est a filia Sion (2:20)
Tr.5 Responsory - 1st Nocturne: Tristis est anima mea (4:53)
Music from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae service performed by Les Arts Florissants on our featured recording this week. We heard “Vau - Et egressus est a filia Sion” followed by the responsory, “Tristis est anima mea.”
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Harmonia is a production of WFIU and part of the educational mission of Indiana University.
Support comes from Early Music America: a national organization that advocates and supports the historical performance of music of the past, the community of artists who create it, and the listeners whose lives are enriched by it. On the web at EarlyMusicAmerica-dot-org.
Additional resources come from the William and Gayle Cook Music Library at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
We welcome your thoughts about any part of this program, or about early music in general. Contact us at harmonia early music dot org. You can follow us on Facebook by searching for Harmonia Early Music.
The writer for this edition of Harmonia is Devon Nelson.
Thanks to our production team: LuAnn Johnson, Aaron Cain, Brock Hamman, and John Bailey. I’m Angela Mariani, inviting you to join us again for the next edition of Harmonia.
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