Leçons de ténèbres

Leçons de ténèbres, literally translated lessons of darkness, is a genre of French baroque music which developed from the polyphonic lamentations settings for the tenebrae service of Renaissance composers such as Sermisy, Gesualdo, Tallis, and Tomás Luis de Victoria into virtuoso solo chamber music.

In the original French sources Leçons de ténèbres is more common; The spelling Leçons des ténèbres is increasingly common in later resources, however modern sources still use de; as seen in Sébastien Gaudelus Les offices de Ténèbres en France, 1650–1790 (2005). Capitalisation of ténèbres varies.

The tenebrae service uses the text of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, originally deploring the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC) and subsequent desolation of the city, but applied allegorically to the three days of mourning for Christ between his crucifixion and resurrection.

However the context of the French Leçons de ténèbres was often private performance. Delalande's 15-year-old daughter sang for Louis XIV first in his living rooms and then in chapel, becoming the praise of all Paris. Philidor's catalogue indicates that Delalande's three surviving virtuoso solo Leçons de ténèbres were composed for such occasions.

A complete set of Leçons de ténèbres for the full three days of Holy Week would have included nine lessons, with each of these leçons requiring the setting of specific texts from Lamentations, although the conventions of exactly which texts to set varied slightly from the Renaissance to the Baroque, and by local custom. The following represents the typical French baroque schema set by Marc-Antoine Charpentier:

However in practice composers rarely supplied a complete set of all 9 settings. An notable exception being Charpentier who authored a complete set Les Neuf Leçons de ténèbres (H. 96–110) and duplicated all the settings several times over.

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