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Vox in Rama by Giaches de Wert
Continuing with Monday's Giaches de Wert thread, I offer for your listening (and possibly singing) pleasure today Wert's passionate setting of 'Vox in Rama', a setting of a passage from Jeremiah:

"A voice is heard in Ramah of weeping and great lamentation. Rachel is weeping for her children, and will not be comforted, for they are no more."

This text, originally recording Rachel's lament over the death or captivity of the children of Israel when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, is recalled in Luke's gospel after Herod's 'Slaughter of the Innocents', an attempt to wipe out the foretold Messiah by killing all male infants born at that time.

But in Wert's setting, published in 1581 in his 'Secondo libro dei motetti', the emotion and visceral quality of the grief and mourning expressed can help us (as it is music's power to do) to truly name and acknowledge and feel our own grief, preparing the way for eventual healing.

Take a listen to the attached recording (by Stile Antico) and I think you'll hear what I mean. The composer really pulls out all the stops of range, of dissonance, of chromaticism, of layering to create an aural analog of what we feel in the face of great loss.

The score is attached, as is a text-translation sheet. In addition, here's a link to a remarkable live performance on YouTube--even more intense than Stile Antico's rendering--by the Danish 12tet Ars Nova Copenhagen.

It is so great that there are more and more fine recordings available of Wert's music!
Click here to download learning materials
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