Tenebrae

Dear fellow travelers through the season of lent,

The days that end the season of lent are dark ones. Dark indeed.

There is a service that is designed to express our reaction to that darkness. It is called Tenebrae, the Latin word for darkness or shadow. The experience is moving. The church hall is lighted only by candles.

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?

2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent. --Psalm 22

As scripture is read, one by one, the candles are extinguished until only one white candle is lighted, the Christ candle. Then, that one also is damped.



At the end of this service, all file out quietly, with our thoughts and hearts crying for mercy.

Pie Jesus Domine

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem,
Blessed Lord Jesus, grant them rest,

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem,
Blessed Lord Jesus, grant them rest,

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem, sempiternam.
Blessed Lord Jesus, grant them eternal rest.

Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis pecatta mundi:
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,

dona eis requiem.
grant them rest.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi:
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,

dona eis requiem.
grant them rest.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,

dona eis requiem sempiternam.
grant them eternal rest.

BRD

Requiem vs Requiem Mass

Dear Terry Riley,

I have been wondering about myself and my musical passion for the Requiem form. I could be wondering whether I am obsessed with death and why in the world I'm fascinated with music that celebrates passings, but no, nothing so psychologically mature as that. I was wondering if I like just Requiem masses, you know, the full-blown form based on Latin texts and lux aeterna, or whether my interest extends beyond that to, well, all things requiemesque. I tested my ponderings by listening to a few things including your Requiem for Adam and Toru Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings.
My first listen of your work was captivated by the initial movement Ascending the Heavenly Ladder and the note pattern that rungs its way in different harmonic arrangements right up to heaven. But after that I started thinking just about your title reference to Adam and that took me on a detour of the mind. If someone uses the name Adam, people automatically assume universality. Requiem for Adam. "Oh," we say, "it is a requiem for humankind." But suppose one tipsy afternoon you decided to do a Requiem for Eve. That would be a different matter. Since she is mother to the race, we could assume the universal, but we don't, unless our minds stray to the universality of evil. Is not that the worst of the curse of Eve? She bears that universal ignominy of inescapable symbollic association with universal evil.

What burden would a requiem for Eve be forced to bear? Could it begin with ascending scales of a heavenly ladder or would it dive with Mozartian immediacy into the wrath of God.

Fool Eve, perhaps she would be well characterized by something like Takemitsu's Requiem with hardly a glance at eternal delight and just the one recurring convulsive motif. Three steps up the dreamy Jacobian ladder before convulsive precipitation and a fall far beyond the degree of ascent.

I remember one New Year's Eve long, long ago. (Where could we, my husband and me, have been going? Home after a Christmas visit?) The radio station of our choice must have rewarded its station crew with a party and us with a repetition, over and over and over again, of the Zeppelin classic, Stairway to Heaven. Now there, is a requiem for Eve, isn't it? Our lady grabbing the golden apple, not totally without hope, but "Oh, it makes me wonder."
Want to hear a midi of this?

Oh well, my mind travels don't really have anything to do at all with your requiem for young Adam Harrington, do they? And isn't that the way, death is universal, but I'll be switched if we pay much attention until it touches the son of our violinist friend, or our mother, or our seat mate, and then the specter before us is more than we can bear, without a requiem. And that, I think is why I listen, to the formal ones and the informal ones, listen, listen, listen, listen. Listen.

All ears,

Betsy

The Beheading—Nabokov; The Requiem—Andrew Lloyd Webber

Dear Vladimir and Andrew,

In 1794, a group of sixteen nuns were convicted and found, on the lists of Robespierre, guilty of crimes against the. . . but it doesn't matter against who, does it?. . . and taken to the guillotine of Paris, the Barriere de Vincennes. They are the subject of this prayer, spoken first by St. Terese of Lisieux:

How beautiful the [beatification] ceremony of our Blesseds [of Compiègne] must have been, and how you must have given thanks to God, who has led me onto this mountain of Carmel, in this Order made famous by so many saints and martyrs. Oh! how happy I would be if my Master also wanted me to pour out my blood for Him! But what I ask of Him especially is that martyrdom of love which consumed my holy Mother Teresa, whom the Church proclaims a victim of charity.

My husband, who has been teaching a class on the writings and thoughts of the early church mystics read me a story from one woman, Ste. Teresa of Avila, who like, Sister Helen Prejean of Susan Sarandon fame, walked with the dead to the scaffold. The story is of the beatific vision experienced by the dear saint who would not leave the head of her condemned and whose labor would not suffer the final humiliation of a decapitated bounce in a basket but whose arms became a bloody cradle and whose spirit joined his for some moments in beatified ascent to the arms of Jesus.

As I stroked the blade of the final page of Invitation to a Beheading, I was prepared for the end, for I had read Azar Nafisi's analysis of the work and knew, if not the book, the conclusion of the book. I had been waiting for this, anticipating this Nabokovian beatification.

But after I closed the book, I popped into my car, and flipped on the cheap little mp3 player that I got for Christmas. It's no iPOD. Every time I turn it on is a surprise, no screen, no log, just random musics. But I had loaded, on the third day of Christmas, the Requiem mass that Andrew composed and produced in 1985 with Lorin Maazel and starring (there is no other way to say it) Placido Domingo, with notable performances by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, the young treble soprano, and backed by the Winchester Cathedral Choir. The Requiem can also be found on Gold: The Definitive Hits Collection.

In my continuing search for the perfect requiem mass, I found yours, Andrew. Unfortunately, it is not perfect, except for the Pie Jesu which is, as sung by then little Paul, as sweet a musical rendering of these words as has ever been composed. (Check out the one minute sample on the above link.)

Pie, Jesu, qui tollis peccata mundi dona eis requiem.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi dona eis requiem sempiternam.

This is the music I would like to accompany my ascent with the Blessed Martyrs of Compiègne (who were, I believe, singing Salve Regina), and Cincinnatus, and Robespierre, when I too have been beheaded.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Blessings,

BRD

PS: A note to Andrew

Mostly, Webber, I think you had best stick with song and dance, but you, like George Gershwin before you, have reached into your soul and found something more for us here. The initial requiem theme is wonderful, though you rush (as I guess we are all wont to do) to the statement of the Kyrie eleison. Then quick as a bunny we are into the Dies Irae. There are wonderful moments throughout and I wouldn't want to discourage you. The Hosanna could stand some work—at the benedictus I'm picturing a high school musical dance troop. And please, please get rid of the Phantom's organ solo during the final Libera Me. Otherwise, thanks for a beautiful rendition.

Requiem for the Doomed

Dear Wilfred Owen,

How is it that we, as a people or as individuals, globally, or singly when standing on a hill under the sun, find it difficult to give up warring? Why is the other cheek so rarely, no matter our religious affiliation, no matter how replete our wealth, no matter the level of our education and experience, no matter how inane the complaint, our response? No, it seems our cheeks must be defended at all costs.

So, we strap our powers upon our thighs and strut. And oh, the strutting does at times seem almost right, upon the rubble in the squares of New York, with bull horn and an eye on the, (how did you say it?) “the arrogance which needs [our] harm.” And with careful preparation, we, for the fight if not for the peace, and with careful preparation, we, for the beginning, if not for the end, so with careful preparation, we, for the death if not for the life, we spy the enemy by satellite and begin to “beat it down before its sins grow worse.”

So we the people, arbiters of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, unite as Eves, and say,
“Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.”

And when he began “his spilling mess-tins” from our own hands, were we surprised?

So now we vote to still the carnage, long after the Pandora of this engagement has outted her box and begun it’s filling with the men and women of the 278th from next door and down the road in Davis County and Tulsa and California and Windsor Castle and Baghdad and Bagdad and Bagdad and Bagdad.

It is never too late to hear the poet. It is never too late to stop whistling while the scythe shaves. But, dear God, it is also never too early.

Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet Saeclum in Favilla,. . .
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus:
Huic ergo parce Deus.

Wilford, The world should thank you for your dying words. Oh that we would hear them now.

Betsy



Note: Wilfred Owen wrote the poetry, (mostly unpublished before his death on the battlefield, just a week before the armistice that ended WWI) Anthem for the Doomed, that shaped Benjamin Britten's pacifist musical statement entitled War Requiem.