Recently a friend introduced me to the Orlando di Lasso motet “Tristis Est Anima Mea,” a beautiful piece that captures in words and music the quiet, expectant sorrow of Lent and the coming sacrifice in which Christ is handed over to sinners for the salvation of sinners. The words are taken from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, right before the moment of his betrayal.
Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem:
sustinete hic, et vigilate mecum:
nunc videbitis turbam, quæ circumdabit me:
Vos fugam capietis, et ego vadam immolari pro vobis.Ecce appropinquat hora, et Filius hominis
tradetur in manus peccatorum.My soul is sorrowful unto death:
stay here, and keep watch with me:
now you will see a crowd of men surround me.
You shall flee, and I will go to be sacrificed for you.Behold the hour approaches, and the Son of man
will be handed over into the hands of sinners.
February 18th, 2013 | 9:25 am
“Tristis est anima mea” is one of the responsories at the old office of Tenebrae for Holy/Maundy Thursday. Which is to say it’s part of our liturgical patrimony that is fading into obscurity. Thank you for flagging this beautiful setting! Even though Tenebrae has pretty much gone away, nothing prevents us from using the piece as a Holy Week motet.
February 19th, 2013 | 5:39 am
I first came across this most beautiful motet when we sang it in the Saint Louis Cathedral choir in New Orleans under the late Elise Cambon–this would have been in the late 70s, early to mid 80s when his excellency the late Philip Hannan was still archbishop there (who, by the way, was a distant relative of Daniel Hannan, the English MEP and writer for the Daily Telegraph). The descending line at Vos fugam would send chills down my spine it was so beautiful.
We sang a Renaissance Missa Brevis every Sunday at the main Mass, and I recall one Sunday a small group of U.N. chaplains waiting for us after Mass to tell us how we were the best choir (i.e., sang the most beautiful music) they had heard in all the countries they visited.
Of course there were also opposite reactions. I recall reading an opinion by a well-known writer of contemporary church songs–writing in a magazine devoted to such–that he had visited New Orleans expecting to hear (in effect) his kind of music or other such contemporary jazzy settings, but instead heard what he described, typically, in unflattering terms as the musical equivalent of old dead white-man’s art. (Sigh)
That era ended when Archbishop Hannan was succeeded by a bishop with less interest in the Church’s musical heritage, whose tastes, apparently, were more in line with the disparagers of beauty than its practitioners. The choir was disheartened and slowly disbanded after that.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact