François Couperin's Trois Leçons de Ténèbres for voice and continuo are in the Holy Week tradition of settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah . Nine were projected

but only three survive (two solos and one duet), and the vocal writing is full of piercing, anguished clashes against the calm simplicity of the accompaniment. Carolyn Sampson and Marianne Beate Kielland relish its expressive depths to the full, and delight, too, in the more outgoing Motet pour le jour de Pâques and Magnificat anima mea . The purely instrumental items by Marais (Tombeau pour Sieur de Ste Colombe , Chaconne in A) and Sainte-Colombe (Prelude in E minor) are less even.
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