Tenebrae Responsoria (Gesualdo)


Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia is a collection of music for Holy Week by Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo, published in 1611. It consists of three sets of nine short pieces, one set for each of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and a psalm and a hymn. The work was written for unaccompanied voices: two soprano parts, alto, two tenor parts, and bass.
The texts of the Responsories for Holy Week are related to Jesus's Passion and are sung in between the lessons at Tenebrae. Gesualdo's settings are stylistically madrigali spirituali - madrigals on sacred texts. As in Gesualdo's later books of madrigals, he uses particularly sharp dissonance and shocking chromatic juxtapositions, especially in the parts highlighting text passages having to do with Christ's suffering, or the guilt of St. Peter in having betrayed Jesus.

Content

  1. Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday
  2. #In monte Oliveti
  3. #Tristis est anima mea
  4. #:Alex Ross writes about Gesualdo's setting of this responsory: "... begins with desolate, drooping figures that conjure Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. It then accelerates into frenzied motion, suggesting the fury of the mob and the flight of Jesus’ disciples. There follows music of profound loneliness, radiant chords punctured by aching dissonances, as Jesus says, “I will go to be sacrificed for you.” The movement from inner to outer landscape, from chromatic counterpoint to block harmonies, humanizes Jesus in a way that calls to mind Caravaggio’s New Testament paintings of the same period, with their collisions of dark and light."
  5. #Ecce vidimus eum
  6. #Amicus meus osculi
  7. #Judas mercator pessimus
  8. #Unus ex discipulis meis
  9. #Eram quasi agnus innocens
  10. #Una hora non potuistis
  11. #Seniores populi consilium
  12. Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday
  13. #Omnes amici mei dereliquerunt me et praevaluerunt insidiantes mihi
  14. #Velum templi scissum est
  15. #Vinea mea electa, ego te plantavi
  16. #Tamquam ad latronem existis cum gladiis et fustibus cemprehendere me
  17. #Tenebrae factae sunt, dum crucifixissent Jesum Judaei
  18. #Animam meam dilectam tradidi in manus iniquorum
  19. #Tradiderunt me in manus impiorum
  20. #Jesum tradidit impius summis principibus sacerdotum, et senioribus populi
  21. #Caligaverunt oculi mei fletu meo
  22. Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday
  23. #Sicut ovis ad occisionem
  24. #Jerusalem, surge
  25. #Plange quasi virgo
  26. #Recessit pastor noster
  27. #O vos omnes
  28. #Ecce quomodo moritur justus
  29. #Astiterunt reges terrae
  30. #Aestimatus sum
  31. #Sepulto Domino
  32. "et alia" – settings of:
  33. #Miserere mei, Deus
  34. #Benedictus

    Publication of the score

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