Lessons of Darkness by Couperin, S 21 jan 2023, No (2023/2023), Old South Church, Boston, United States

Regarded as the most famous ecclesiastical works by François Couperin (1668–1733), an eminent French Baroque musician during the rule of Louis XIV, the Leçons de ténèbres (“Tenebrae Readings”) are a surviving collection of three vocal pieces for one and two high voices and continuo for Maundy Thursday. (The other two collections of lessons for Good Friday and Holy Saturday are lost.) Published in 1714 and presumably written for the nuns of the Longchamp Abbey in the outskirts of Paris, the three lessons use the Latin text of the Book of Lamentations from the Old Testament, in which Jeremiah mourns the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians.