the texts of the responsories for holy week are related to jesus's passion and are sung in between the lessons at tenebrae. gesualdo's settings are stylistically "madrigali spirituali" - madrigals on sacred texts. as in gesualdo's later books of madrigals, he uses particularly sharp dissonance and shocking chromatic juxtapositions, especially in the parts highlighting text passages having to do with christ's suffering, or the guilt of st. peter in having betrayed jesus.