'' Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae '' ('Lament of the Holy Mother Church of Constantinople') is a
motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...
by the
Renaissance composer
Guillaume Dufay. Its topic is a lament of the
fall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople, also known as the Conquest of Constantinople, was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire. The city fell on 29 May 1453 as part of the culmination of a 53-day siege which had begun o ...
to the
Ottoman Turks
The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922).
Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...
in 1453. Because of its
Byzantine subject matter, it is sometimes grouped together with ''
Vasilissa ergo gaude ''Vasilissa ergo gaude'' ("''Therefore rejoice, princess''") is an isorhythmic motet by the Renaissance composer Guillaume Dufay. In terms of its subject matter, it is sometimes grouped together with ''Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantino ...
'', ''
Apostolus gloriosus'' and ''
Balsamus et munda cera'' as one of Dufay's "Byzantine motets".
Historical context
The motet probably belongs to a series of four Lamentations for the fall of Constantinople composed by Dufay and mentioned for the first time in one of his letters addressed to
Piero and
Giovanni de' Medici. The letter must have been written on February 22, 1454, although the exact year is not specified in the text. The musical score and the texts of the French Chanson and the Latin Cantus Firmus are found in two contemporary manuscript sources: Codex 2794 (fols. 34v-36r) of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in
Florence, and MS 871N (fols. 150v-151r) in
Montecassino
Monte Cassino (today usually spelled Montecassino) is a rocky hill about southeast of Rome, in the Latin Valley, Italy, west of Cassino and at an elevation of . Site of the Roman town of Casinum, it is widely known for its abbey, the first h ...
.
It is believed to have been composed in the context of the "
Feast of the Pheasant
The Feast of the Pheasant ( French: ''Banquet du Vœu du faisan'', "Banquet of the Oath of the Pheasant") was a banquet given by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy on 17 February 1454 in Lille, now in France. Its purpose was to promote a crusade ag ...
", a banquet and extravagant political show organised in
Lille by
Philip the Good
Philip III (french: Philippe le Bon; nl, Filips de Goede; 31 July 1396 – 15 June 1467) was Duke of Burgundy from 1419 until his death. He was a member of a cadet line of the Valois dynasty, to which all 15th-century kings of France belonge ...
of
Burgundy
Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...
on 17 February 1454.
[Devereaux, Rima: Reconstructing Byzantine Constantinople: intercession and illumination at the court of Philippe le Bon. ''French Studies'' 59.3 (2005): 297–310]
/ref> Its purpose was to propagate the idea of a crusade
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were i ...
for the recapture of the city. It is, however, unclear whether the piece was ever performed on that occasion. There are contemporary accounts of the banquet (notably the ''Memoirs'' of Olivier de la Marche, and the ''Chroniques'' of Mathieu d'Escouchy), which name and describe in much detail various pieces of music performed at it, but they fail to mention this piece.[Spechtler, Franz Viktor: Lyrik des ausgehenden 14. und des 15. Jahrhunderts. Rodopi, 1984, p. 156] At one point in the show, according to the chronicles, an actor dressed as a woman in white satin clothes, personifying the Church of Constantinople
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople ( el, Οἰκουμενικὸν Πατριαρχεῖον Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, translit=Oikoumenikón Patriarkhíon Konstantinoupóleos, ; la, Patriarchatus Oecumenicus Constanti ...
(according to one hypothesis, played by Olivier de la Marche himself) entered the hall of the banquet riding on an elephant, to recite a "''complaint and lamentation in a piteous and feminine voice''" (''"commença sa complainte et lamentacion à voix piteuse et femmenine"''). It has been surmised that this was the moment when Dufay's motet would have been performed; other authors have conjectured that it was merely a moment of inspiration and that the motet was actually written later.[Alberto Gallo, translated by Karen Eales: ''Music of the Middle Ages II''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. p. 104, proposes it was written a year later; Spechtler (''op.cit.'') merely states the time and context of its composition is unknown.]
Content and structure
The piece is a four-voice chanson-motet. It follows the structure of a motet insofar as it has a cantus firmus line based on Gregorian plainchant in its tenor voice, but the structure of a chanson insofar as there is only one other text sung, in French, in the upper voices. The text is a poem in Middle French, presenting the voice of a mother lamenting the sufferings of her son and addressing God as her son's father – evoking both the image of the Virgin Mary in the Lamentation of Christ, and the personification of the Church as the mystical mother of the faithful.
References
External links
Online performance
by Collegium Cantorum, Washington.
Online sheet music
by M.A.B. Soloists
{{italic title
1454 works
Motets
Renaissance music
Fall of Constantinople
Compositions by Guillaume Du Fay