Lamentations Hieremiæ Prophetæ by Emilio de' Cavalieri--Cantores Musicæ Antiquæ, J. Kite-Powell

Live performance employing choral-vocal improvisation. St. John's Episcopal Church, Tallahassee, Fl, November 21, 2004
Cantores Musicæ Antiquæ [Singers of Early Music] was formed in the fall of 1989 with the intent to perform music from 1200-1650 in a historically informed manner. The group consists of eight to twelve singers, often one on a part, and includes undergraduates, masters, and doctoral students. Some students are voice majors, while others study music education, choral conducting, theory, or musicology.
Members of the ensemble:
Kristen Johnon, Lyndsey ThorntonJessicas Reed, sopranos
Tim Galloway & Edward Newman, countertenors
John Spilker & William Sooutherland, tenors
Wayne Adams & Reiner Weissenberger, basses
Adam Robers, continuo organ
Jeffery Kite-Powell, director
Cavalieri’s Lamentations is a through-composed liturgical text that would have been sung for the Tenebrae service. In this piece the two styles of composition are evident in the alternation of Renaissance-style choral sections with solo and small ensemble movements, which are more typical of the early Baroque period and are sung to the accompaniment of the continuo organ. The slow, imitative choral movements are enunciations of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which are found in the book of Lamentations as an incipit to each verse. The remaining choral sections are responsories to the text sung by soloists, duets, and trios.
Lamentations contains actual improvisation is the penultimate movement, Hierusalem convertere ad dominum tuum, in which a soprano improvises against the rest of the choir. Of these embellishments, the most striking and unusual to the modern listener is the trillo. It is described in some sources as being a repeated ‘beating of the throat’ and in others as sounding like ‘the bleating of a goat’

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