Musical representation of the seven deadly sins is surprisingly scarce in comparison with its counterparts in other aspects of Western medieval culture. Theologians from the earliest centuries of Christianity expound in countless genres on the hazards of the sins, and artists delight in depicting them as cautionary images in painting and sculpture. But the echo in music is muted at best, and reasons for this dearth are understandable. The first liturgical music of the Western tradition arose out of a desire to heighten verbal expression in worship. Until the late eighth century, texts set to melody were based almost exclusively on the Bible, the sources of which predate the advent of Western teaching against the deadly sins by the desert Fathers. Even when composers began to use religious texts of their own creation, however, the seven deadly sins as a topic only rarely commanded their attention.

To be sure, many musical texts discuss sin in general terms, drawing on the vast array of admonitory teachings contained in the Bible and elsewhere in theological writing. A chant might, for instance, deal with the ‘evil beast [who] … devoured my son Joseph’ (Genesis 37. 33) without naming its allegorical equivalent, the sin of envy, as seen in the responsory Videns Jacob given below: