1 - Trait. Deus, Deus meus [12:15]
Matines du Jeudi Saint
2 - Première leçon (ton de Tolède) [3:10]
3 - Répons. In monte Oliveti [2:33]
4 - Deuxième leçon (ton de Silos) [3:51]
5 - Répons. Tristis est anima mea [3:13]
6 - Troisième leçon (ton de Silos) [3:25]
7 - Répons. Ecce vidimus eum [3:40]
Matines du Vendredi Saint
8 - Première leçon [2:43]
9 - Répons. Omnes amici mei [2:54]
10 - Deuxième leçon [2:59]
11 - Répons. Velum templi [2:50]
12 - Troisième leçon (ton de León) [3:47]
13 - Répons. Vinea mea electa [3:15]
Matines du Samedi Saint
14 - Première leçon (ton de Silos) [3:40]
15 - Répons. Sicut ovis [2:38]
16 - Deuxième leçon (ton de León) [2:49]
17 - Répons. Ierusalem luge [2:19]
18 - Troisième leçon (ton de Silos) [3:39]
19 - Répons. Plange quasi virgo [2:56]
20 - Graduel. Christus factus est [3:27]
Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve
Kadri Hunt (#1)
Risto Joost
Riivo Kallasmaa
Tõnis Kaumann
Taniel Kirikal
Jaan-Johannes Leppik
Raul Mikson
Erik Salumäe
Siim Valdmets
Mikk Üleoja
Ieremias
In Judæa under Roman and Tiberian domination, a man drove from the
Temple 'those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of
money'. 'What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these
things?' asked the Jewish authorities. 'Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up,' was the reply. 'But,' as St John tells
us, 'he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen
from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto
them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had
said.' (John 2:13-22)
Just over six hundred years earlier, after Egypt's defeat by the
kingdom of Babylonia, which thus became the new world power, extending
its domination throughout the region, a man rebuked the puppet kings of
Judah, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, and denounced the suicidal folly of
their derisory rebellions against Nebuchadrezzar. That man was
Jeremiah. After the disaster, after the sack of the city and the temple
(587 BCE), a voice was again raised in Jerusalem - the voice of a man
attempting to understand the incomprehensible: Eikha? - Why?
The Scroll of Lamentations - five elegies describing the solitude of
the devastated city and the sufferings of its people abandoned by God -
is also traditionally attributed to Jeremiah. This Scroll is read each
year on the ninth day of the month of Av in the Jewish calendar - Tisha
be-Av - commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples,
the latter destroyed by Titus's Roman legions in 70 CE.
And each year at Matins on the three days commemorating the Passion and
death of Jesus (the destruction of the temple of his body), Christians
read passages from the Lamentations of Jeremiah: Quomodo? - How?
The solitude of the man on the cross and his incomprehension of his
adversity is also expressed in the cry 'My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?' A cry that appears at the beginning of Psalm 22, which is
sung at Mass on Palm Sunday (tractus Deus, Deus meus) and recited while the altars are stripped after evening Mass on Maundy Thursday.
***
The first four chapters of the Lamentations are alphabetic
acrostics. Chapters 1, 2 and 4 have twenty-two verses, which is the
number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The first letter of the first
verse is aleph (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) and that of
verse 22 is taw (the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet). Chapter 3 has
sixty-six verses - aleph beginning the first three, beth the second
three, and so on. Chapter 5 is not an alphabetic acrostic, although
like the others it has twenty-two verses. This acrostic symbolises
language: the language of revelation, but also the language of
everything that man is capable, or incapable, of saying. Like many
other translations, the Vulgate mentions the initial letters by their
Hebrew names at the beginning of each verse. What could have been
simply a rather unusual means of numbering the verses has thus become
part of the text and seems to have fired the imagination of all those
who have set these verses to music. The vocalises of Couperin's Leçons de ténèbres
are in everyone's ears, but they did not come to the composer as a
brilliant stroke of inspiration: they had antecedents. The Spanish
tones presented on this recording, possibly deriving from an ancient
recitation on a D string from Aquitaine, concentrate all their emotion
in the vocalised part, investing in these plain letters all the sadness
that cannot be adequately expressed in words. At the end of each of the
passages from the Lamentations, the liturgy adds the exhortation
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum: 'Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, turn to the Lord thy God!' This is not arbitrary: these
words reflect the endlessly repeated prayer that appears at the end of
the Scroll itself: 'Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be
turned; renew our days as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us;
thou art very wroth against us.' (Lamentations 5:21-22.)
***
Later came the man who brought about great changes, Saul/Paul, the
man who saw meaning in all this desolation: 'But God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the
world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' (Galatians 6:14).
Misfortune is meaningful to the world. The suffering of the righteous,
i.e. the part of the office that is entrusted to the psalmist (the
tract) or the reader (the Lamentations), is answered by the suffering
expressed by the full chorus, the murmuring of the world - compassion
and the coming into possession of a heritage: the responsories, during
the office of Matins, and, concluding this programme, the gradual Christus factus est,
which punctuates the liturgy throughout Holy Week. The scandal of the
righteous dying alone and abandoned is not only a mystery on which to
meditate, but also a gift that is to be understood through the
interpretation given by the Christian Church, which is summarised in
the response Ecce vidimus eum: Hic peccata nostra portavit, et
pro nobis dolet ; ipse autem vulneratus est propter iniquitates
nostras, cuius livore sanati sumus. 'This is he who has borne our sins,
and who grieves for us. But he was wounded for our iniquities. By his
stripes we are healed.' (cf. Isaiah 53:4-5).
The modes used in this rendering of the Lamentations of Jeremiah were
transcribed from Spanish manuscripts by Dom German Prado of the holy
order of Benedictines, and published by Desclèe in 1934. We have used
this edition. The melodies of the responses were recently reconstructed
from a large number of manuscripts by Dominique Crochu. They sometimes
differ considerably from the usual versions. Except for one note, the
tract and the gradual are true to the standard editions.
Jean Pascal Ollivry
du 6 au 10 mai 2002
la Cathédrale Sainte-Marie (Toomkirik) de Tallinn
2003 | Arion ARN 68602
erb.nlib.ee
muziekweb.nl