La compositione lacrimosa: Musical Style and Text Selection in North-Italian Lamentations Settings in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

In the autumn of 1564, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice recounted his experience on a recent journey from Rome to Venice of hearing the Lamentations sung during Holy Week in Perugia and Arezzo. It was a source of considerable annoyance to the abbot that, instead of the anticipated refined, devout and pious rendition appropriate to the liturgical occasion, the performance had been a confused uproar owing to the large number of participating singers and the extensive use of ornamentation, with the result that the mournful character of the Lamentations text had not been comprehensible. The direct consequence of the abbot's criticisms was the published compilation, by the anonymous monk to whom the observations had been made, of a comprehensive collection of polyphonic settings by the Benedictine monk Paolo Ferrarese of the constituents of the Holy Week liturgy. The editor stresses that the settings demonstrate the required qualities of piety, devotion, gentleness and smoothness, as well as clarity of text setting in which each verbal emphasis and nuance is realized.

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