The Tenebrae or ‘shadow’ services of Holy week, so named from the custom of extinguishing a candle after each Lesson, are from the night-time Office of Matins (despite the name, poor Frère Jacques was actually roused in the dark of night, rather than by the matitudinal “morning bells” of Lauds or Morning Prayer). The services of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday are each divided into three Nocturns of three Psalms and three Lessons each, the first Nocturn featuring Lessons from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, each verse begining with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The accompanying Responsories usually draw on the Book of Isaiah.

“The greatest composer of the Catholic Church” (as the Bach-partisan Slominsky qualifies his entry in Baker’s Dictionary), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina has a heroic status as the saviour of church music dating to Agostino Agazzari’s speculation in 1607 that “music might well have been banished from the Holy Church…had he not found the remedy” in presenting his Missa Papae Marcelli at the Council of Trent. Exaggerated over centuries, the legend culminated in Hans Pfitzner’s 1917 opera Palestrina, a dramatization of an episode that may in fact never have occured. Idolized by Mendelssohn, Wagner and Liszt, to Berlioz he must have seemed a plaster saint who “may have had some taste and a certain amount of scientific knowledge; but genius - the idea is too absurd!” Nevertheless Berlioz too conducted Palestrina’s music.

Palestrina’s birth is undocumented but at his death on 2 February 1594 a eulogy gave his age as 68. His quincentenary will thus be celebrated through the first part of 2026. He lived his whole life in and around Rome (his native Palestrina is about 20 miles from the capital). Legend shrouds his early life as well: a charming story is that he was discovered as a singer while peddling vegetables. By 1555 Palestrina directed the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s Basilica and was appointed to the Sistine Chapel Choir in January 1555 by Pope Julius III. That summer a new Pope, Paul IV, dismissed him with other married members and he became Maestro di cappella at Rome’s Cathedral St. John Lateran (1555-60, following Orlando di Lasso) for which he wrote one setting of the Lamentations. He became dissatisfied and after long negotiations with the Hapsburg court in Vienna went instead to S Maria Magiore (1561-66), where he had been a choirboy, before returning to the Cappella Giulia (1571) for the remainder of his life. He published one set of Lamentations in 1589 as “Liber primus”. Three further settings were eventually printed in 1888 as ‘Book 2’ (from the Lateran archives), ‘Book 3’ (Cappella Giulia library) and the present ‘Book 4’, from the Vatican Ottoboni Library.

The Responsories heard tonight are from a manuscript dated 1764 and titled Responsoria anno 1555 composita a famosissimo Dom. Aloysio Prestino (a latinized form of Palestrina). Some of the pieces use versions of texts from Urban XIII’s 1632 revision of the Breviary, which casts some suspicion on the attribution. The question is hard to settle, though: the Hymnarium published under Palestrina’s supervision in 1589 was reissued with the new texts in 1644, and it would be surprising if hand copyists did not also take into account their own liturgical needs.

Schola Cetatus is a pool of singers associated with St David of Wales, tonight comprising Ben Rudiak-Gould, countertenor, Carl Boe and Jordan Fong, tenors, Ian Crane, baritone & Richard Mix, bass. ‘School of Whales’ is a wink to the anonymous Gregorian chant author who (likewise) could not resist a cetacean pun in Latin while honoring St. David.