Isnardi: Lamentations

Few details about the life of Paolo Isnardi (ca. 1536−96), once maestro di cappella at Ferrara Cathedral, are known today, but his surviving compositions attest to his significant compositional skill. His Lamentationes Hieremiae prophetae (1572) and Lamentationes et benedictus (1584) are among the first prints from northern Italy to contain all nine lessons of the Triduum sacrum and combine them into a cycle by musical means. They were published even before the lamentations composed by Victoria (1585), Lasso (1586), Palestrina (1588), Ingegneri (1588), and Dentice (1592), and thus these compositions, which are much better known today, can hardly have been models for Isnardi’s works. Isnardi’s settings are especially unique in their selection and arrangement of verses, which deviate strongly from the Tridentine standard. In fact, no similar choice of verses can be found in any Lamentations setting from the period between 1550 and 1600. The musical settings feature several expressive techniques, including fauxbourdon, fleeting chromaticism, and the use of the plagal cadence as a structural device.