Ensemble Venance Fortunat & Anne-Marie Deschamps - De Profundis: Deplorations Sacrees de la Tradition Occidentale (1986) [Reissue 2015]

The theme of this recording was inspired by the place where it was carried out: some metres below ground, in the Meudon's quarry. The De profundis offertory, which was a natural choice in the circumstances, provides a repertory of outcries and lamentations. There are similar repertories, associated with various kinds of ritual, in the cultures of all races.

In the medieval Western world, the Old Testament figure of Rachel -as exemplary wife and mother- foreshadowing Mary and the Church, often appears in such Laments, which convey the grief of a mother on the occasion of a death. In Mediterranean countries, a very live tradition of rituals of lament was preserved for a long time, both in liturgical and in popular forms.

The planctus is a lament on the death of a person who is known and named, not a meditation on death in general. This is the spirit in which Christians commemorate the death of Christ on Good Friday. The ritual of lament in which the Cross is borne in procession towards an altar which symbolizes Christ 's tomb, developed into a liturgical play (the Planctus Mariae) depicting Mary's suffering as she stands at the foot of the Cross.

The singers ' rendering aims first at bringing out the difference between the fixed sounds (structural sounds) and the unfixed, more ornamental sounds; and next at demonstrating the expressive quality of those pieces springing from the observance of the liturgical actualities as opposed, to the liturgical ordinary. The intention is to demonstrate, through examples taken from the medieval repertory of sacred music, how Man, as an untempered instrument, can be true in various ways.