The special rites to commemorate the Passion of Christ between Maundy Thursday and the dawning of Easter morning follow a strict, and carefully considered, liturgical structure. The nighttime office of Matins, for instance, adopts the format known as Tenebrae—ritual darkening of the church over the course of the service. Three groups of three Psalms each are recited, each with a scriptural Lesson and a freely composed devotional responsory, on each of the three days. Much of this music was set in a monumental 1585 publication by the Jesuit composer Tomás Luis de Victoria; indeed, his collection was one of the earliest, and one of the most comprehensive, settings of the music for Holy Week. Though composed earlier (appearing in a 1572 collection of motets as well) and often performed on its own, the motet O vos omnes (a responsory for Matins of Holy Saturday) belongs solidly in the heart of this collection.

The text, taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1:12), asks all who pass by the speaker on the road to judge whether any sorrow compares with his; in its Holy Week context the speaker is assumed to be Christ hanging on the cross, questioning whether even His Father has forsaken Him. Though Victoria was certainly capable of composing jubilant music, his reflective and mystic spiritual temperament seems to have flourished in reaction to more plangent texts such as this. His musical setting follows the same form (aBcB, with the capital B signifying a refrain of both text and music) as all the other the Tenebrae responsories of his collection (there are eighteen in all), and adopts the same mode (G with one flat).

But the pathos of the musical product is extraordinary. As a middle responsory in a group of three, the work exhibits vocal scoring slightly higher and more strident than those of its neighbors. While many of the responsories open with pure homophony (chordal texture), O vos omnes is penetratingly asymmetrical, with single voices anticipating each entry or chord change. Carefully placed accidentals infuse the melodies with half-steps (E-flat to D, often in immediate proximity to F-sharp and G). Voices may even outline a diminished fourth in melody (for example the soprano line's descent from E flat to B natural in the opening phrase), a favorite melodic gambit of this composer. Beyond that, descents through a complete "tetrachord" (G-F-E flat-D) inhabit all four voices, most prominently when singing the text "Si est dolor." This melodic gesture not only embodies a kind of physical depression, but also signifies "Lament" in conventional musical terms to any literate contemporary.



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