Brumel’s Lamentations: an analytical guide

This essay is a supplement to the liner notes for our CD From Darkness Into Light, with a bit more information on the historical and musical context in which I believe Antoine Brumel’s Good Friday Lamentations arose.

Musical settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah

The traditional shape of musical settings of verses from the Old Testament book, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, comes from the liturgy (or Divine Office), of the Catholic Church. On the three days before Easter – Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday – the service of Matins incorporates three lessons from the book of Lamentations; that is, three series of verses, each of which finishes with the refrain, “Jerusalem, return to the Lord, your God.” These services were traditionally conducted on the afternoon before the day to which they belonged, as natural light waned. Candles gradually extinguished brought the worshippers into darkness – reflected in the name given to the services, Tenebrae. Tenebrae offices were deeply connected to their communities: they varied a great deal from place to place, and era to era – even after the Roman liturgy became more standardised after the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century, local variations were common.

The Book of Lamentations is written in an ancient Hebrew form, the kinnot. The first four chapters are written as an acrostic: the first letters of each verse form the Hebrew alphabet.  The Latin name for the book is Threni, literally “laments.” The three-part Greek funeral lament, the “threnos,” is echoed in the Tenebrae liturgy with its three lessons highlighted by the Jerusalem refrain. Musical settings of the Lamentations verses always pronounce the Hebrew letter first, and often this is the most elaborate music in the piece.  They also always include the refrain, regardless of whether they are intended to be used in worship. On the other hand, many settings do not include a complete set of verses: if they did, they would be far too long for inclusion in public worship.

Most early settings are sparse and solemn: the voices often declaim the Latin text together (or almost together) in a slow rhythm and relatively static harmony (homophony), with simple polyphony reserved for the ends of phrases and for the refrain. Many settings are based on a chant melody (or cantus firmus), which can often be heard in long note-values sustaining in the middle of the texture. Another common feature of these works is the use of equal voices: that is, two to six voices whose ranges are very close, so that they can be sung by a group of adults, male or female.

Brumel’s Lamentations: Sacred drama, not holy liturgy

The earliest polyphonic settings of Lamentations verses date from the beginning of the fifteenth century, but they are relatively unusual until the end of the fifteenth and the turn of the sixteenth century, when – it is believed – the practice of singing Lamentations became popular, particularly in Florence. Polyphonic lamentations were used in churches, but they were also valued by the quasi-religious brotherhoods, or confraternities, to which the male population of Florence belonged. Confraternities sponsored all forms of secular cultural activity – music, visual arts, literature, drama – but they were also places of private worship and devotion. An important secondary function was the education of Florence’s boys, providing them with both spiritual guidance and a place to exercise their creativity, which in turn formed the next generation of the Florentine elite.

Brumel’s Lamentations appear to be a product of this fusion of piety and culture. Unusually, they set a complete series of nineteen verses; the series itself is also atypical. The first seventeen verses are those that were eventually allocated to Good Friday in the standardised Roman liturgy, but the final two verses appear in only two among the thousands of surviving breviaries from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The whole is well over 1000 bars long and lasts almost forty-five minutes in performance. The length of the work and the choice of verses seem almost self-consciously remarkable, particularly for a work composed at sometime between around 1480 and around 1520. (Note: Brumel’s death date of 1512-1513 has always been just an assumption – there may be good reason to believe he lived beyond this point, and was in some way connected with the Medici in Florence and/or Rome.)

What makes this already highly unusual setting unique, however, is that it has five refrains, not three. The verses are also divided differently to the liturgy, with the refrains placed so that Brumel’s music would need significant adaptation if it were to be used in a service (Figure 1).

The five sections with their refrains do not correspond with any existing musical or liturgical structure, but they do map exactly onto another art form, extremely familiar to the Florentine elite. Between 1506 and 1516, the Florentine publisher Giunta issued no fewer than three editions of the complete tragedies of the Roman poet-philosopher, Seneca. The Senecan tragedy, the literary model for many Elizabethan dramas, has a particular five-act narrative arc: the Exposition, the Beginning of action, the Complication of action, the Reversal of fortune, and the Catastrophe.  Each section of Brumel’s Lamentations then becomes an act in a drama, and the refrains take the place of the classical Chorus, concluding each act.

Although the verses are taken from the Old Testament are are Jeremiah’s lament for the fall of Jerusalem, they also have a metaphorical relationship with the Passion of Christ. It is possible to read the whole story of Good Friday, from Christ’s arrest in in the Garden of Gethsemane to His entombment, into Jeremiah’s words. This, of course, is no accident. The early Christians who compiled the liturgy would have known exactly what they were doing, but the shaping of those verses into the five-act narrative required someone who recognised their dramatic potential.

Act 1, the exposition, tells of God’s decision to sacrifice Jesus, the mocking of Christ as he is taken prisoner (Luke 22:63-65), and the failure of Sanhedrin law (John 18:31). Act 2, the beginning of action, recounts the indifference of Herod and Pilate to Christ (Luke 23:8-25), Christ’s suffering on the road to Cavalry, and the lamenting women whom Christ addresses (Luke 23:28). Act 3, the complication, re-enacts the mocking of Christ on the Cross (Matthew 27:39-44); and then addresses the grieving Virgin Mary directly (John 19:26). Act 4, the reversal of fortune, reveals that the text is spoken by Christ himself: He rebukes the Pharisees (an interpolation from earlier in the Passion story (e.g. Matthew 23, where the chapter ends with a lament for Jerusalem) then narrates the Good Friday eclipse (Matthew 27:45); His rebuke to God (Matthew 27:46), His agony, His death, and His descent into Hell. Act 5, the catastrophe, ends with Christ in the tomb, as yet unresurrected.

Brumel’s music for the Lamentations

Brumel’s music heightens the dramatic character of the work, through both large structures – the way he arranges the sections and reuses themes – and local details – number of voices, whether they are singing in chords, or in different melodies at the same time; speed of note values; the overall range between highest and lowest voice; harmony.

Form

Although the form of the work is taken from drama, he grounds the whole setting in the sacred – one essential change to a word in Act 2, “Joth,” shows that the text is from the breviary, not from the Bible (see below). He also uses the “Roman” Lamentation tone on F as his cantus firmus (Example 1). It is clearly audible throughout most of the nineteen verses, although often in the middle of other moving parts (Example 2).

The whole is held together by around nine short “motifs” that appear and reappear throughout the work, sometimes in inverted, or decorated, transposed, rhythmically altered, or developed through expansion (for instance, the bare rising fifth can be filled in to make a scale). All of this material is introduced in the first Act (Example 3). These motifs sometimes join sections, introduced in the final phrase of one and recurring in the first phrase of the next, creating a sense of development and temporal direction.

In one case, the polyphonic handling of a motif becomes symbolic: for instance, the mocking of Christ, which occurs twice in the narrative. It appears both in Act 1 and Act3: the same motif (but with different words) is treated in close imitation (or stretto fuga) at the unison in three voices (Examples 4a and 4b).

These tiny fragments and their evolution are the web that hold the whole piece together, but Brumel also uses larger structural gestures. Although the refrains always set the same words, there are two different versions: the first in duple meter (Acts 1, 3, and 4), and the second in triple meter (Acts 2 and 5). The refrain to Act 3 differs in one small but important way to those of 1 and 4; the refrain to Act 5, the finale of the whole piece, varies the Act 2 refrain to a slightly greater degree. Both of these alterations show that Brumel is aware of the broader implications of large-scale musical form: he expects the listeners and singers to remember the refrains, so that the changes – when they come – add meaning. His treatment of the Hebrew letters, too, unfolds over the whole piece: To start with the voices overlap, the words never quite slotting together, but by the end of the piece, even if their melodies intertwine, all four voices speak the words together in collective recitation.

Rhythm and texture

The “time signatures” (mensuration) of the work move frequently between divisions of two and three, although often the changes are more indicative of speed than of meter – that is, when the divisions move to what looks like “triplets” three notes take as long as two to sing – but the stresses in the words are still in duple meter . Often, therefore, a change in mensuration signals a dramatic shift (Example 5).

Typically for Lamentation settings of the period, throughout the work sections of homophony alternate with sections of imitative polyphony. However, Brumel’s polyphony is at times unusually complex compared to more austere settings by his contemporaries (see above, the stretto fuga in Example 4). The homophonic phrases tend to be short, with no repetition of text, but the polyphonic sections treat the text generously. The homophonic sections almost always involve all four voices, sometimes with one voice divided even further (divisi) to enrich the sonority and exploit the maximum range (Example 6).

On the other hand, the polyphonic sections display a variety of textures that ebb and flow with the drama: four-voice imitative polyphony for narration and emphasis; three-voice falsobordone-like parallel first-inversion chords; double duet passages (that is, two voices singing together working in duet with the other two) (Example 7); and at particularly affective points, a single melodic voice against the psalm tone (Example 8).

Harmony

Brumel’s use of harmony demonstrates his expressive intent in both a large-scale and a local way, particularly through two recurring features. – the oscillating manipulation of the fifth degree from the final F, between C♮and C♯ , which occurs many times in the five acts; and the insertion of a bleak and plangent E♭ (E flat) chord between “tonic” chords of F, which darkens letters before especially affective verses, but occurs in the verses only twice, at Christ’s death, and at at the very final word of the verses, “desolatam” (desolate). Both of these devices are introduced in the second half of Act 1 (Examples 9a and 9b).

These gestures are effective (and affective) both at the local level and on a cumulative basis: the E flat sonorities surprise every time they occur, and the C♮/C♯ ambiguity is continually destabilising for the ear. Yet Brumel’s Lamentations were composed at a time when the notion of “word-painting” or imitatione in music was not a primary concern. There are very few instances in which individual words inspire a direct application of a musical device. Rhythmic devices are most obvious: for instance, the words “Me minavit in tenebras et non in lucem” (he leads me in darkness, and not in the light) inspires the use of black notation (only the singers are aware of this, though, as such a change cannot be detected by listeners); the words “tota die” (all day) are set to very long note values.

Dissonances occur throughout the piece, normally as a consequence of writing in so many parts in a restricted range. Only once does Brumel appear to use harsh, unresolved dissonance and false relation – a direct clash between C♮and C♯ – to convey the meaning of the words, at “Prophetae tui viderunt tibi falsa et stulta” (Your prophets have seen for you vain and foolish [things]). This passage, at the beginning of Act 4, is preceded by the E-flat sonority, and in its development the tension between C♮and C♯ comes to a head (Example 10).

Brief further thoughts

There is no way to date this set of Lamentations, except to say that it must have been written prior to 1559, the date on the manuscript in which it is found, and stylistically it matches works written in the first and second decades of the 1500s. The attribution to Brumel comes from another Florentine manuscript that contains only two of the letters and the triple time refrain, but there is no way of accurately knowing when those verses were copied, either. On the other hand, there is no reason to doubt that it is, in fact, by Brumel, as its musical style is consistent with other works by him and there is nothing in it that might suggest another composer.

But it is equally true to say that there is no known work that compares in form to this setting, so any thoughts we might have about the context for which it was composed can only be hypotheses; we can only go on circumstantial evidence, historical events, and our knowledge of culture in the Italian peninsula. Bearing this in mind, several matters stand out.

We do not know Brumel’s death date for certain. Richard Sherr, the esteemed historian of Roman musical culture in the 1500s, presumed that Brumel died in 1512, based on the circumstances of a letter written in mid-May 1512, from Mantua, that suggests he might have been mortally unwell. And while the Florentine Vincenzo Galilei, writing near the end of the sixteenth century, said that Brumel had been called to Rome by Pope Leo X in 1513, musicologist Daniel Heartz rejected this as muddled thinking on Galilei’s part, based not on Galilei’s knowledge but on his assumptions.

The recovery of Brumel’s Lamentations in a Florentine (or Roman-under-the-Medici) manuscript, albeit one copied in 1559, makes the issue of a late connection between Brumel and the Medici a new conundrum – particularly Giovanni de’ Medici,  who became Pope Leo X in 1513, and who was responsible for a great expansion in the celebration of Holy Week at the Vatican. To our current knowledge, Brumel was never involved with the Medici, but we do know that Giovanni suddenly appeared in Mantua in early June 1512, having been captured at the Battle of Ravenna in April, and then held as a prisoner of the French army in Bologna.

The penultimate verse, “Ursus insidians factus est mihi leo in absconditis” (Lams. 3:10) marks the point that this setting departs from the most common version of the Good Friday Lamentations lessons. It also stands out by virtue of its vivid animal metaphors, the bear and the lion, perhaps not coincidentally the symbols of the Orsini family and Leo himself. Leo X’s mother was an Orsini (Clarice), and his sister-in-law, Alfonsina Orsini, was the de facto ruler of Florence from 1515-1520. Alfonsina was also a very visible member of Leo’s court in Rome from 1513-1515. For a Florentine listener, or someone connected with Leo’s court in the early years of his papacy, these beasts would have had an instant significance or additional meaning.

Along with the manuscript’s tantalising inscriptions suggesting a connection to the Buca di San Paolo, a Florentine confraternity whose membership included generations of Medici men, the inclusion of this singular verse could perhaps be a minute trace of Brumel’s relationship with the Medici in the years after his disappearance from the documentary record. At the very least, the recovery of the Lamentations could spark more archival searches, which may eventually shed more light on the life of one of the Renaissance’s great musical figures.

Annotated text: some features to listen for in our recording of Brumel’s Lamentations

Act 1: Exposition. Heth. Cogitavit Dominus

God’s decision to sacrifice Christ. This section sets out most of the main motivic material (see Example 3), particularly the perfect fourth, rising and falling by step. It is primarily in four voices throughout.

The first mocking of Christ; Christ (King of the Jews) is taken prisoner. The priests condemn, but have no legal jurisdiction. The letter “Seth” introduces the “open fifth” motif and the E♭ sonority. There are duos in thirds, and the “mocking” motif is introduced for the first time, and the cantus firmus migrates to the Bassus. The verse also sets up principal affective contrast between C♮/C♯.

Refrain I – in duple meter.

Act 2: Beginning of action. Joth. Sederunt in terra.

Herod and Pilate refuse to exonerate Christ; the women lament on the road to Cavalry. “Joth” is the first letter set with  imitative polyphony. The verse highlights the “open fifth” motif, and exploits a three-voice texture.  The cantus firmus migrates temporarily to the Cantus voice at “consperserunt cinere capita sua.”

[i]At this point the text follows the Breviarium romanum (uso francescano), Venice: Renner, Franz, & Pietro da Bartua, 1478, which (like many breviaries) adds “virgines Ierusalem” to the Vulgate text after “capita sua,” and uses “accinctae” to refer to the virgins. The Vulgate has “accincti,” referring to the elders, and ends the verse with “Ierusalem” instead of “Iuda.”

Christ’s suffering on the road to Cavalry. The verse twice uses divisi to create a five-voice texture. The “open fifth” motif is filled in at “effusum” – at at this point, the texture thins out to one melodic voice against the cantus firmus.

Refrain II – in triple meter.

Act 3: Complication of action. Lamed. Matribus suis dixerunt

The second mocking of Christ (wheat and wine are the Eucharist) at the Cross. Letter starts with an A (not an F) in the Bassus, and introduces the three-voice falsobordone texture (parallel first-inversion chords). The second iteration of the “mocking” canon and its development (cantus firmus in Bassus). More C♮/C♯ instability.

Mary at the Cross. These verses directly address Mary (John 19:26). The letter has both filled and open fifth. There is an increased incidence of C♮/C♯ instability, and the cantus firmus disappears. Sparse textures with duos and double duets.

Refrain I – in duple meter, but with a C♯ (A major) instead of C♮(A minor) at “convertere.”

Act 4: Reversal of fortune. Nun. Prophetae tui viderunt

Rebuke to the Pharisees. The letter includes the E♭sonority. The first half of the verse in triple time (perfect mensuration) and four voices; harsh dissonance for “falsa et stulta.”  C♮/C♯ instability is at maximum. The second half of the verse is in duple time (imperfect mensuration), reduced textures. The open fifth returns, as does the fractured cantus firmus.

Paraphrase of Psalm 22 – the rebuke continues. C♮/C♯ instability continues; four-voice texture.  Cantus firmus abandoned at “perfecti decoris”; this is the most animated polyphony in the work.

The words of Christ on the cross. Letter very sparse (with E♭); verse static, no polyphony. Overlap with…

The Good Friday eclipse. …next letter; more animated. Verse in coloration (though still in duple time).

“My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?” Letter rhythmically complex, with return of early motifs; declamation becomes static at “tota die.”

Christ’s agony and death. Very short letter. Again return of early motifs, but developed. E♭sonority for the first time in the verses on slow homophonic recitation, “contrivit ossa mea” (symbolising Christ’s death).

Letter is a duo between Cantus and Bassus. Bassus carries cantus firmus in verse; brief returns of many motifs.

Christ descends to Hell. Letter in coloration (the dark place), with E♭sonority. Verse changes mensuration – slowest and most static point in the piece.

Refrain I – as in Act 1.

Act 5: Catastrophe. Gimel. Circumaedificavit

Christ entombed. Letter with A (not F) in Bassus; duos in thirds. From this point, letters always pronounced together. Verse mostly in four voices; features under-third “Landini” cadence.

Letter is Cantus/Altus duo. Another “Landini” cadence in verse, which ends in perfect mensuration.

Four-voice letter, the verse in perfect mensuration (although the meter rocks between duple and triple – a crooked path).

Four-voice letter. Verse contains return of early motifs; very static at “factus est mihi leo.”

Four-voice letter with E♭sonority; Verse begins very sparse, with single voices against cantus firmus. Verse ends with agitated polyphony that circles around the E♭sonority.

Refrain II – modified so that the Cantus rises only to D, not the full scale up to F (more subdued and contained.

Further reading

This is a short bibliography on Lamentations, manuscripts, the copyist Antonio Moro, and the composer Antoine Brumel. Not the same person, as far as I know.