Today’s choice was composed by Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, who was Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza. He used a highly chromatic language, but is perhaps more famous for killing his wife and her lover after finding them together.
O vos omnes is a motet for five voices, published in 1603. Gesualdo seems to have preferred setting madrigals, and brings that intensity of word-painting and eccentric and adventurous chromaticism to this motet.
The text of this motet (below in translation) was popular during the Catholic Counter Reformation. It comes from the responses sung during night prayer between Good Friday and Easter Sunday – its comes from the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, but can also be seen to be said from the point of Jesus hanging on the cross speaking to bystanders below.
O vos omnes
O all of you
qui transitis per viam:
that pass by the way,
attendite et videte
attend and see
si est dolor
if there be any sorrow
sicut dolor meus.
like to my sorrow.
The Listening Project Blog 