Most Passion dramas, in their final scenes, carefully avoid hints of the events to follow on the third day: the only joy they sometimes convey comes from the dawning realization by the centurion at the crucifixion, that Jesus truly was the Son of God. The libretto published by Barthold Heinrich Brockes (see Thursday’s post) ends […]
Tag: choral
Out of the depths
Psalm 130, the sixth Penitential Psalm, concludes positively with reassurances of God’s ‘plentiful redemption’ but begins as a gloomy lament in which the penitent cries out for mercy ‘de profundis’, ‘from the depths’—presumably the depths of despair where the light of hope is extinguished. While there is nothing in its text that marks it as […]
One person’s cry, amplified and multiplied
Psalm 102, the fifth Penitential Psalm, is a lengthy lament (see its 28 verses here). The first part, verses 1-11, is the prayer of an individual who, weak and tearful, worn down in a time of great trouble, pours out his own desperate pleas to God: ‘… Do not hide your face from me … […]
‘Sing to the life-giving Trinity’
After Pentecost, on Trinity Sunday the Christian Church globally celebrates the Holy Trinity: the belief in one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the central tenet that unites all the orthodox Christian denominations across both Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity: first adopted at the fourth-century councils of […]
Music for an American disaster
The USA is in deep trouble, with, by 16 May, at least 90,000 deaths from COVID-19: the worst casualty-rate so far of any country in the world and already, in merely eight weeks, 50% greater than the number of US military personnel killed or missing in action over the eight years of the Vietnam War. […]