The Southern Tier Singers' Collective will present a performance of Lamentations of Jeremiah by Orlandus Lassus, a masterwork from the late Renaissance noted for its emotional concentration and vivid text setting. The concert will be led by the ensemble’s music director, William Culverhouse.
Culverhouse says Lassus’ setting stood out among the many musical treatments of the biblical text. “There are so many settings of this text, starting in the early Renaissance and continuing into our own day,” he said. “What makes Lassus’ setting exceptional is that it’s incredibly emotionally concentrated. It’s intimate—only five voice parts—and there’s very little florid vocal writing.”
The work was composed after the Council of Trent, when the Catholic Church emphasized clarity of text in sacred music. “The Council of Trent proclaimed that vocal music used in worship needed to be intelligible,” Culverhouse explained. “Lassus’ settings are very clear and very straightforward in terms of text setting. And yet they’re extraordinarily pictorial—every visual image or emotional feeling is represented directly in the musical texture.”
Culverhouse contrasted Lassus’ approach with that of his near contemporary Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. “Palestrina’s music is very reserved,” he said. “It’s emotional, but within a much narrower range. Lassus’ music is more emotionally intense, with much more direct word painting.” He pointed to the opening of the work, where the Latin word "sola"—“alone”—is suddenly sung by a single voice after a full five-part texture. “All of a sudden it’s stripped away, and you feel barren and desolate with that one tenor line singing one single word.”
That expressive intensity reflects Lassus’ wide-ranging career. Though employed in Catholic courts and chapels, Lassus was also famous for secular madrigals in many languages. “A lot of that very direct, very emotional writing finds its way into his sacred music,” Culverhouse said. “You can hear the madrigalist in the church composer.”
Despite working during the upheavals of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Lassus’ career followed a relatively steady path. “He always worked in Roman Catholic contexts,” Culverhouse noted. “Unlike composers who moved back and forth between Lutheran and Catholic courts, Lassus was somewhat shielded from those disputes, and he was able to develop a continuous sacred style throughout his lifetime.”
Although Lassus is often associated with expressive chromaticism, Culverhouse says these Lamentations are stylistically restrained. “Some of his wildest, most chromatic music actually comes earlier in his career,” he said. “These settings are relatively diatonic, but they’re still extremely pictorial.”
The texts themselves come from the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Scriptures, as translated into Latin by Jerome for the Vulgate Bible. “They were used as the lessons for the Office of Matins during Holy Week,”
Culverhouse explained. “These services—called Tenebrae—were sung in near darkness, with candles extinguished one by one. It’s a powerful ritual, and it adds another layer to how this music was originally experienced.”
The Southern Tier Singers' Collective will perform Orlandus Lassus’ Lamentations of Jeremiah on Sunday, February 22 at 4 p.m. at St. Luke Lutheran Church, 109 Oak Avenue in Ithaca. More information is available at https://southerntiersingers.org.