Triduum

The Tenebrae Lessons were important components of Holy Week in Baroque France. While François Couperin's settings of the Tenebrae lessons hold a significant place in both the repertoire and scholarly literature, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's voluminous settings of the Tenebrae Lessons deserve a place alongside those by Couperin. This paper first outlines the liturgy of the Tenebrae service. Second, it examines the welcoming and influences of the Italian style on the French Leçons de Ténèbres at a time when Lully’s seizure over stage music was complete. Third, it illustrates the influence of secular music making on this important Liturgical Office. Fourth, it briefly discusses the importance of rhetoric for Charpentier and his contemporaries, and rhetoric's influence on the compositional style of liturgical music.

The history of a fixed Easter date prior to the late-second century and the history of the equivocal meaning of Pascha, along with the failure of Nicea's broad indications to be observed throughout the Roman Empire do not indicate that a basis observes for either theology or some other inexorable principle to demand a common Easter. However, pastoral reasons due suggest a common search for trying to get the course of the sun and the moon correctly for uniting family and believers in the lived experience of Christianity.