The Leçons de ténèbres by François Couperin draw audiences into a musical world of intense intimacy and depth. Composed for the Holy Week liturgy, they are some of the most striking works of baroque vocal music ever written. In them, Couperin sets to music texts taken from the Book of Lamentations that are generally sung during the evening Tenebrae service, where candles are extinguished one by one until the space is plunged into total darkness — a ritual that makes palpable the experience of loss, abandonment and remembrance. Couperin turns this liturgical tradition into an exceptionally powerful piece of music by alternating between meditative silence and moments of remarkable expressiveness.

With just one or two voices and basso continuo, Couperin creates a finely wrought world whose simplicity only amplifies its radiance. Here the Passion of the Christ isn’t recounted like a distant tragedy; instead it becomes an audible inner state: a lamentation, a memory, a fragile bit of hope in the darkness. This score of rare depth will be performed by Le Concert d’Astrée with Emmanuelle Haïm at the organ.