Incipit Oratio

The six-voice a cappella vocal ensemble, Nordic Voices, was formed a little over ten years ago to specialize in both Renaissance and Contemporary music. In this, their fifth album, they present a moving programme of renaissance Lamentations. These are settings of Old Testament verses written by the prophet Jeremiah as he witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of Judah in 586 B.C. and, as Nordic Voices highlight in their booklet, are still of relevance today as they chart the horrors that humans are capable of inflicting on one another.

The Leçons de Ténèbres (Tenebrae Lessons) fall within the tradition of French sacred music under the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. These late-night services during Holy Week, which set the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah to music, find three successive visions in Lalande (Versailles), Fiocco (Brussels) and Pollio (Northern France), in which an increasing theatricality and Italianness emerge. With her Ensemble Léviathan, Lucile Tessier crafts a showcase worthy of the King's Chamber for the melismas of the Soprano Eugénie Lefebvre: the shadows come alive, a long lamentation rings out from the abysses, in the flickering flame of candlelight…

A sublime survey of sacred music of the high Renaissance, Hyperion's 2018 release Amarae Morti offers transparent performances by Peter Phillips and the a cappella chamber choir El León de Oro. Covering music of the Franco-Flemish and Iberian schools, the program follows a trajectory from darkness to light, from somber motets by Dominique Phinot, Orlande de Lassus, Nicolas Gombert, and Manuel Cardoso to glorious works by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Cristóbal de Morales, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. There is a consistency of subjects in the program, which includes settings of the Lamentations, Media Vita, the Regina Coeli, and the Magnificat, revealing different treatments of these familiar texts and varying levels of complexity and contrapuntal mastery, which culminate in the magnificent polychoral works of Victoria and Palestrina.

At the time of his death, in 1741, Joseph-Hector Fiocco's widow sold the manuscripts of the composer's works to Joannes Vanden Boom, Dean and Chapel Master of the Cathedral Saint Michel and Saint Gudule in Brussels, where the composer had held the post of zangmeester (choirmaster) until his untimely death. Among this collection is a complete set of nine Lamentations for Holy Week for the unusual instrumentation of solo voice, obbligato cello and basso continuo. Fiocco’s Lamentations are conceived in the most elevated Italian style of the early eighteenth century. They are masterful and can compete with the most beautiful such compositions, given their dramatic power and poignant emotion. In addition to the nine Lamentations known from the abovementioned manuscript, the present recording offers in world premiere two new settings and a differently instrumented version found in the archives of the Fonds St.-Jacob in Antwerp.