Lamentations from the Low Countries: a performance edition
At various times and places, elaborate musical formulas (‘tones’) have been used for sung lessons on solemn liturgical occasions. The best-known are the tones used for the lessons of the first nocturn of the Night Office during the Triduum Sacrum. The first three lessons of each Night Office were taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. A new edition offers Lamentations as notated in five Low Countries sources. At this moment, these are the only manuscripts from the region known to contain fully notated Lamentations; each is illustrative of a particular liturgical practice in the region.
The edition - 197 chants covering the entire text of the Book of Lamentations, preceded by a detailed introduction - makes these chants available to and performable by a wider audience. Of special interest are the highly melodious Lamentations added in the damaged margins of ms. Utrecht University Library 419, and those of ms. GB-Ob lat. lit. d 1, kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford for centuries.
It is hoped that this edition will contribute to a deeper understanding and wider performance of the Low Countries’ rich musical heritage.
The author, Rens Tienstra (PhD, MA, MMus), is a composer, conductor, musicologist and teacher, leading several Dutch schola's, including Schola Cantorum Amsterdam. He is artistic director of the International Festival of Gregorian Chant in Den Bosch. Promoted to doctor in musicology with a magna cum laude dissertation on melodic variation in Low Countries chant manuscripts, Tienstra is passionate about deepening understanding of the Low Countries' rich liturgical and musical heritage.
