Tempesta di Mare's "Lamentations of Jeremiah'

Is it religion or art? Or just Saturday night entertainment? Tempesta di Mare juggled with all three approaches when it presented the Czech composer Jan Zelenka's 1722 Lamentations of Jeremiah.

In Zelenka's day the Lamentations were a traditional feature of Holy Week ritual. His six cantatas were presented, two at a time, on the three days preceding Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The Lamentations bewail the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, but they were adopted by the Catholic Church as a suitable response to the agonies that preceded the Resurrection.

Tempesta preceded the event with a pre-concert lecture by Tanya Kevorkian, a musicologist who studies the audiences that attended events like the Holy Week performances held in Dresden's royal chapel. Professor Kevorkian suggested— with apologies for the triviality of the comparison— that audiences reacted to the splendor of the music and the magnificence of the setting much the way modern adults react to the color and overall atmosphere of the Philadelphia Flower Show.

One singer per day

Tempesta had to choose between a "liturgical presentation" that tried to recreate a church service and a "concert presentation" that tried to create an 18th-Century performance (which would also have been held in a church). Zelenka wooed his audience by writing cantatas for three different solo voices, but he limited the payroll to one singer per day: A bass sang the two Thursday cantatas, an alto took the Good Friday pair, and a tenor finished the cycle on Saturday.

That made sense when the cantatas were performed on three different days, but it would have created a dull effect had they been presented one after the other in a single concert. Tempesta enlivened the proceedings by scheduling the cantatas out of order— bass, tenor and alto before the intermission, and bass, alto, tenor afterward. The rearrangement scrambled the different sections of the text, but it produced the kind of musical variety Handel and Bach built into Messiah and the Mass in B Minor.

It was the correct decision, in my opinion. For all we know, Zelenka might have told his patron, Augustus the Strong of Saxony, that he wanted to use two different voices each night, and the court treasurer might have ruled that the budget wouldn't permit it.

Three vocal styles

Whatever the historical realities, the result this past weekend was a surprisingly enjoyable evening. The Lamentations might not be the most upbeat text you can contemplate on a Saturday night outing, but Zelenka's music is just as warm and sensual as the costumes his wealthier listeners must have worn.

The three soloists brought markedly individual styles to their assignments. Bass David Newman delivered his pronouncements with authority and a good command of Baroque ornaments; tenor Aaron Sheehan added a sense of urgency; and alto Lorie Gratis contributed the vocal effects that sounded most distinctively Baroque to a modern ear.

Ironically, Gratis was the member of the threesome who wouldn't have appeared in the original performances, since her part would have been sung by a boy or an adult male alto, who would probably have been a castrato.

Appeal to aristocrats

Zelenka treated the orchestra as an equal partner with the voices. The instrumental music was obviously one of the attractions that drew people to the service. Zelenka varied his forces with the flair of a showman and gave his players music that would have appealed to aristocrats who were often accomplished amateur musicians. The somber string music of the first cantata on the program yielded to the lighter sound of two Baroque flutes in the second, and the rest of the cycle played with the possibilities in an inventory that included a full complement of Baroque winds and strings.

Professor Kevorkian concluded that Zelenka's audiences reacted to the Holy Week performances with a mixture of reflection, repentance and musical enjoyment. Tempesta's re-enactment didn't inspire much repentance, but it provided convincing support for my major attempt at reflection: Our ancestors mastered the eminently useful art of combining piety with pleasure.