Welcome to the second episode in this new series of playlists from the archives of Cappella Romana. During this week and the next in 2020, Western and Eastern Christians are journeying through Holy Week – the devotionally intense period from Palm Sunday through Good Friday to Easter Sunday. This year instead of attending or, more often, chanting its musically rich and theologically profound services, I am, like many of you, staying home. To observe Holy Week under these conditions I have prepared for you two playlists tracing some of its themes through music.
I hope that you enjoy this week’s playlist. Next week I will be back with more Russian, Greek, and Italian music for Holy Week from the archives of Cappella Romana. Thank you for your attention and, especially, for supporting the unique musical work of Cappella Romana.
Holy Week 1
Arvo Pärt, The Woman with the Alabaster Box – Odes of Repentance, Seattle, 2009, (Radio Broadcast – Live recording)
Kassía, Sticheron for Holy Wednesday (On the Sinful Woman) — January 2020
Lamentum Virginis from the Venetian Deposition ceremony of Good Friday: ‘Cum autem venissent ad locum’ (Venice in the East)
‘O Dulcissime filie Syon’ (Venice in the East)
Emperor Leo VI ‘the Wise’ (866–911), ‘When She Saw You Hanging on the Cross’, from Good Friday in Jerusalem
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), ‘Do not Weep for Me, Mother’
Further Reading
I. The Gospel Story of the Sinful Woman as Set to Music by Kassía and Arvo Pärt
Arentzen, Thomas (2020), ‘Sex and the City: Intercourse in Holy Week’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 28 (1), 115-47.
Bouteneff, Peter (2015), Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence (Yonkers, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).
Catafygiotou Topping, Eva (1981), ‘Kassiane the Nun and the Sinful Woman’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 26 (3), 201–9.
Shenton, Andrew (2018), Arvo Pärt’s Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956-2015 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
II. The Virgin Mary at the Cross and Tomb of Christ
These selections are discussed, with selected bibliography, in my essays for the booklets accompanying the following Cappella Romana recordings: Venice in the East: Renaissance Crete and Cyprus (CR419-CD); Good Friday in Jerusalem (CR413-CD); and Maximillian Steinberg: Passion Week (CR414-CD).
