by Nicholas Jones

Church music for Lent is usually framed as an incentive to penitence, to trimming down one’s life and meditating on the transience of existence on earth. Particularly powerful during the Baroque period was the service of Tenebrae — performed during Holy Week and accompanied by the extinguishing of candles — for which many composers have left us wonderful settings. At Euclid Avenue’s Church of the Covenant late Sunday afternoon, the diminishing light of a winter day sufficed for the darkening, and the music supplied the intensity. [Read more…]