Sacræ Lectiones novem ex Propheta Job

Description

Raphaël Passaquet is undoubtedly the first, with his Ensemble, to have unearthed this music nearly forty years ago. He did so with such joy that this recording has retained all its freshness and remains, today, a reference. We wanted this reference not to fall into oblivion, especially since it had not even been released on compact disc. The Sacrae Lectiones novem ex Propheta Job by Roland de Lassus were printed in 1565 in Venice. At that time, he was conducting the chapel of Duke Albert V of Bavaria in Munich. It dates back to 1555-1556, and possibly even 1554. Thus, it is a work from the composer’s early youth, as he was only twenty-three years old then. Around the same time, he provided further proof of his precocity with another equally remarkable cycle, the Prophetiæ Sibyllarum. Why did Job compose this work? Job is obviously a figure foreshadowing Christ and his trial, the Passion, a passage through suffering and death. This is why the Church reads these texts during the Matins service on All Souls' Day, a day of commemoration for the faithful departed. It is likely for this reason, beyond the fact that Job was considered one of the patrons of musicians, that Roland de Lassus composed this music on this text. It seems that shortly after the death of his mother, he felt the need to express his own laments with this work, which should then be regarded as his last filial monument. He did so with a liturgical perspective where music serves the text, where each melodic inflection illustrates the meaning of the text, within the very complexity of polyphony.