We were working on our tour music today and picked up the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Alberto Ginastera. When we started working on the second movement based on the words "Ego vir videns, ego paupertatem meam" which, loosely translated means, "I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his (Gods') wrath". There is such a deep sense of miserable agony with no clear release. The movement starts in the bass line and slowly stretching up to tenor, then alto is added, and finally soprano.
The piece is so haunting that I had to find out more about Mr Ginastera. So I googled him and found some of his history on a website for Seattle Choral Company . When he wrote this piece around 1942 he was in exile from Argentina and was living in the United States. The work later in the third movement does resolve itself, but the long painful line in the second movement is one of the best settings of this kind of suffering without any anger towards God. As a matter of fact the moving upward line between the parts gives the sense of prayer in quiet resignation. While this text was from a Jewish event many centuries before, it reminds me that suffering is not unique to time or space.
No comments:
Post a Comment