Lamentatio. Music from the Portuguese Renaissance to the Holy Week

Abstract

Founded in 1131 and extinct in 1834, the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra has a long-standing history that intimately intertwines with the history of Portugal. Supported by political and religious powers, it rapidly became the most important cultural establishment in the country. When studying the ‘new institution’ born from the 1527 reform, one is confronted with twenty-one surviving musical sources reuniting a sum of more than a thousand works. From these sources, the P-Cug MM3, is at the center of this publication, more specifically a set of Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae, the critical edition of which is the main purpose of this thesis. The text of this piece derives from the Book of Lamentations which consists of five poems that narrate and dwell on the destruction of Jerusalem, in 587-586 BC, which find its liturgical purpose in the Holy Week, during the Tenebrae, a long visual and sonic experience that depends on the music, light manipulation, and spoken word to create the desired cathartic effect on the congregation.