Lamentation

You know well, my brothers, that we have four obligations in common, which force us to prefer death over survival: first our faith and piety; second our homeland; third, the emperor anointed by the Lord and fourth; our relatives and friends.The Last Roman Emperor Constantine XI — who died fighting the Turks in the streets of Constantinople

A heart-rending dirge of lamentation and woe

Composed by one of Western Christendom’s finest choralists

In remembrance of the end of days: May 29, 1453 the fall of Constantinople,

The Queen City of Eastern Christendom fallen to the forces of Ottoman Turkish Sultan Mehmed II.

Written by the brilliant Franco-Flemish choralist Guillaume Dufay (1397–1474),

Leading composer in the Burgundian School, composed in 1454, a year after

The fall of Constantinople.

This ethereal dirge, “Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae”,

Was inspired by the Book of Lamentations on the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians:.

O very pity, pity of all hope fountain-father of our fathers

Saviour of us all of whom I am the mother,

Complain to me of my many failures and faults

Come see your sovereign lord in Constantinople

Slung on a cross crucified again here where he kissed the feet of women forced to sell their bodies to men