Early Music Missouri presents a concert of intimate and moving French vocal music for the Lenten season by two 17th-century French masters. This concert feature some of the finest Baroque Tenebrae Lessons by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, sung by a trio of sopranos (Arianna Aerie, Samantha Arten, and Olivia Roland) accompanied by period instruments (Sarah Bereza, chamber organ; Stephanie Hunt, viola da gamba; and Jeffrey Noonan, theorbo).
The Tenebrae services, held on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Holy Week, are a liturgical chiaroscuro, a play of shadow and light, inviting reflection on Christ’s suffering and death. In addition to the psalms, a traditional part of all Daily Office services, the Tenebrae services feature lessons taken from the biblical book of Lamentations: songs of grief and sorrow composed after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. From the fifteenth century, as early as Guillaume Du Fay, Renaissance composers ornamented the Lamentation plainchants with polyphonic settings in the motet style, some simple and graceful and other stunningly elaborate. Nowhere was the genre more cultivated than in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, where the leçons de ténèbres took root and continued to develop as a genre. Highly melismatic, deeply chromatic, poignantly dissonant, and distinctly French Baroque in style, these Tenebrae lessons offer scope for tremendous expression and drama.
This concert features two Leçons de ténèbres by Marc-Antoine Charpentier along with Louis-Nicolas Clérambault’s extended motet Miserere mei, Deus, a highly operatic setting of the penitential Psalm 50 for three sopranos. The performance includes solos for theorbo and chamber organ by Robert de Viseé and François Couperin.
EMMo’s six-concert Mainstage Series takes place at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ladue MO. The space offers an exquisite sound and a beautiful setting for this music. Parking is free and both parking and the performance space are handicapped accessible.
Early Music Missouri is the region’s foremost promoter and presenter of Early Music concerts. Its performances feature Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque repertoire performed on period instruments by expert performers from the region and nation. For more information, visit earlymusicmissouri.net.
