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Iudas mercator pessimus is a work dedicated to Academia Vocal de Granada. Iudas Mercator Pessimus is a work written for choir with soloist. The text is a responsory of darkness collected in the Gospel of St. Luke. The work expresses the fury against Judas for having betrayed Jesus. The beginning is narrated by a soloist as the people murmur what is happening. The people end up condemning Judas under angry screams and with a lament preceded earlier by the soloist. All that tension ends up breaking down and arriving at a passage where music expresses the pain of the condemnation for a few coins, later saying “He had better not have been born”. The work ends with an exhibition of the choir divided into eight voices in which it rejects, with fury, the act of Judas.
Information:
Year: 2018
Text: Liturgical
Difficulty: Medium-High
Staff: SATB divisi + solo
Duration: 4.00 min.
Pages: 9
Language: Latin
Premiered: Academia Vocal of Granada – 2018 –
Text:
Iudas mercator pessimus
osculo petiit Dominum:
ille ut agnus innocens
non negavit Iudæ osculum.
Denariorum numero
Christum Iudæis tradidit.
Melius illi erat,
si natus non fuisset.
Translation:
Judas, the vile merchant,
required a kiss from the Lord
who, like an innocent lamb,
did not deny the kiss to Judas.
For a large amount of dinarii,
he betrayed Christ to the Jews.
It would have been better for him,
had he not been born.