Alliance Music Pub

Composer: Anonymous, c. 1600
Editor: James Dearing
Series Editor: Simon Carrington
Voicing: SAB a cappella

Performance Note
This intensely beautiful setting of the most famous of all laments can be treated with flexibility and imagination and will lend itself powerfully to individual interpretations. I suggest an elastic tempo, a relish of the dissonances, an emphasis on the suspensions, time at the cadences, careful syllabic stress, and a dynamic scheme to reflect the ebb and flow of King David's tide of grief as he contemplates the death of his son. - Simon Carrington

Editorial Note
This anonymous motet was discovered by my late colleague, Dr. Irving Godt, at the British Museum in a volume (B.M. Add. 33235, pp. 1'3) containing other manuscripts by John Blow, Henry Cooke, Christopher Gibbons, Pelham Humphreys, Henry Loosemore, Henry Purcell, and Jacobo Carissimi, including his Missa a quinque et a novem (1666). The irregular barring of the manuscript (3/1, 5/1, 4/1, 3/1 etc.) has been replaced with a simpler system which conforms to the cadential structure. - James Dearing, Indiana University of Pennsylvania