Two Settings of David’s Lamentation, Part I
Text and Context
King David’s lament for his son Absalom, slain in battle after he rebelled against his father, has provided excellent material for many composers across faiths, nations, and time. The texts for these musical settings come from various Biblical and other liturgical sources. The music served different purposes, both liturgical, such as fillers between readings from the Old Testament, and non-liturgical, such as funerals.
I want to focus on two settings, one from the turn of the 16th century, either by Josquin des Prez (1450–1521) or more likely by Pierre de la Rue (1452–1518), and the other by Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), published in 1629. These settings, while focusing on the same biblical episode, could not be further apart musically. Josquin/La Rue’s setting is for four voices, plaintive and capturing the polyphonic heights of his day to portray a wounded human’s grief. Schütz, on the other hand, uses a single bass soloist along with four trombones and continuo, using the declamatory style of his day to depict the king broken with grief. Today’s post focuses on the text and history of various musical settings of this lament. The series will continue with discussions of Josquin/La Rue’s and Schütz’s settings.
Absalom’s rebellion and death are depicted in the Second Book of Samuel. Absalom rebelled against his father King David and raised an army against him. After being handily defeated by David at the Battle of Ephraim’s Wood, Absalom fled David’s army. His long hair got caught in the thick branches of an oak tree. While David had ordered his men to capture Absalom alive and not hurt him, David’s commander Joab slew Absalom as he hung in the branches of the tree. David was stricken with grief on hearing of Absalom’s death.
John Spilker provides a survey of Renaissance settings of this lament. These follow various texts, including 2 Samuel 18:33 and 2 Samuel 19:4 from the Bible. Non-Biblical texts include various plainchants and medieval antiphons (short recited or sung chant refrains used in rituals). Catholic composers would set these antiphon texts as motets; these were performed in the liturgy. For example, the Rex autem David antiphon text was set to music by an anonymous composer in 1506. Early settings were concentrated in Spain, France, the Italian states, Burgundy, and the Low Countries. Protestants would also use these after the Reformation. The 1506 setting appeared in an anthology compiled in the home of the Lutheran Reformation, Wittenberg, in 1538. Other motets using antiphonal texts contained David’s lamentation as one of multiple texts involved.
The antiphonal texts were directly connected to liturgical services. In contrast, texts taken directly from biblical sources could be used for liturgy as well as other purposes. David’s lamentation itself would often be combined with other biblical passages, recompiled to suit the occasion. Commonly chosen for pairing was David’s lament for his friend Jonathan, son of the previous king Saul. Lines between these would often get blurred, mixing a lament intended for a son with one intended for a close friend.
Composers could have selected these texts for non-liturgical settings for any number of reasons. Perhaps the son of their patron, or another in the local upper class, died, necessitating a funeral or memorial service. This, however, would not explain the large number of settings of this specific lament throughout music history, especially given multiple alternatives. The mix-and-match of the texts suggests rich opportunities for expression. Word painting had become a powerful tool in the renaissance musician’s arsenal at the start of the 16th century, and musical rhetoric would also take up position by its end. Composers could not resist the evocative texts, especially when written in poetic form or paired with other antiphons or other biblical verses. In a time when the meaning of the underlying text bore increasing weight in a composer’s modus operandi, this lamentation was too tempting to miss. Indeed, the next two posts shall closely dissect compositional decisions regarding text.
Finally, the texts and translations for our chosen settings of David’s lamentation. Unfortunately, Substack does not allow a clean table.
The Josquin/La Rue setting:
Absalon, fili mi, fili mi, Absalon, quis det ut moriar pro te, fili mi Absalon. (2 Sam. 18:33) Non vivam ultra, (Job 7:16) sed descendam infernum plorans. (Genesis 37:35)
Absalon, my son, my son, Absalon, would that I could die for you, my son, Absalon. Let me live no longer, but descend into hell, weeping.
The Schütz setting:
Fili mi Absalom, Absalom fili mi:
quis mihi tribuat ut ego moriar pro te,
Absalom fili mi, fili mi, Absalom. (2 Sam. 18:33)My son Absalom, Absalom my son: would to God that I might die for thee, Absalom my son, my son, Absalom.
The obvious difference is that the former uses three separate sources, adding two lines unrelated to Absalom’s death, while the latter uses only 2 Samuel 18:33, and that too, in the Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible. While styles and motivations had changed considerably in the century spanning these two compositions, the inclusion– or exclusion– of the additional texts is also vital in setting the musical affect of these pieces apart. The latter setting focuses on David and his personal grief at Absalom’s death. The former, meanwhile, draws from two other laments: Job’s misery at losing his children and earthly possessions as a test of his faith, and from Genesis, Jacob’s lament for his son Joseph, left for dead by his siblings. Paternal anguish from elsewhere in the Bible complements David’s sorrow, leaving this text less focused on David as an individual. This allows, as we shall see, a creative rending of the grief of an individual in the latter and that of any father in the first, reinforced with Judeo-Christian values of faith and constancy.
Next week: the Josquin/La Rue setting of David’s Lamentation.
Music
Josquin des Prez’s/Pierre de la Rue’s setting of David’s Lamentation
Heinrich Schütz’s setting of David’s Lamentation
References
Spilker, John D. “‘Oh My Son!’: The Musical Origins and Function of King David’s Lamentation.” College Music Symposium 49/50 (2009): 427–50.