Thomas Tallis set the first lesson, and second lesson, of Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday between 1560, and 1569: "when the practice of making musical settings of the Holy Week readings from the Book of Jeremiah enjoyed a brief and distinguished flowering in England (the practice had developed on the continent during the early 15th century)".
A voice part is missing from the majority of the work as found in the only copy of the lost original manuscript and so performance editions require substantial reconstruction.
Leçons de ténèbres are a French chamber solo style most famously represented by the lessons and responsories of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and the Leçons de ténèbres of Nicolas Bernier, Jean Gilles, Michel Richard Delalande, Michel Lambert, François Couperin.
The high baroque Central European style also includes choral and orchestral settings of lamentations by composers such as Jan Dismas Zelenka.
Contemporary settings include those by Igor Stravinsky (his Threni), Edward Bairstow, Alberto Ginastera, Ernst Krenek and Leonard Bernstein (his Jeremiah Symphony, which contains Hebrew text in the final movement).