(Please reflect on the scripture passages and read the commentary before listening to the music.)
PSALM OFFERING 1 OPUS 7
A prayer for all victims of human violence.
See, O Lord, how distressed I am; my stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me, because I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death. Those who were my enemies without cause have hunted me like a bird; they flung me alive into a pit and hurled stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, “I am lost.” (Lamentations 1:20, 4:52-54)
Their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. (Psalm 37:15)
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was killed in St. Paul by a police officer following a routine traffic stop. On July 7th, Micah Johnson, shot dead 5 police officers, 2 civilians, and 9 police officers in a sniper attack in Dallas. The composing of Psalm Offering 1 was my response to this horrific violence upon humanity. This music, written in long stretches from Friday, July 8 to Sunday night July 10, is in memory of ALL victims of violence. Whether it be from gunfire, bomb, blade, suffocation, blows by fist or blunt weapon, any violence perpetuated upon another human being is violence against God. It is my supplication to God to change within the violent their hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. I pray for the conversion of all who profit by the manufacture of weapons of any sort to cease making money off the destruction of human beings.
This is my anguished prayer to God for all mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children and friends whose hearts have been crushed by the cruel acts of violence against their loved ones. In Isaiah, chapter two, we hear the prophet speak of turning spears into pruning hooks, and swords into plowshares. The time has come for all weapons to be destroyed. May all the materials that create a weapon be melted into a molten mass never to be used for any other purpose than to be buried into the earth.
ABOUT THE MUSIC: The sharp, atonally dissonant chords, heavily accented begin the music. The sound assail the ears like gunshot, the rapid staccato passages like automatic gun fire, the sostenuto pedal blurring all these sounds into an almost indiscernible noise.
The second melody, B, is the lament of those who have been crushed by the death of their loved ones by violence. The Italian word Lacrimosa literally means to sob. It is derived from the Feast of Our Lady Of Sorrows, the mother of Jesus, as she watched him die on the cross. The minor key expresses the sorrow, the descending passages of melody are the tears that flow. The scripture passage that ran through my mind as I composed this is the quote we hear from Matthew’s Gospel on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Matthew quotes a passage from Jeremiah:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Matthew 3:18)
As the lamentation of melody B ends, the violent chords of A return, the two sections battling back and forth in change of meter, change of tempo, as more are killed and more lament until the lament drowns out the deafening sound of the gun fire and predominates to the end of the piece, slowly reducing in sound as sobs gradually slowly soften. The music ends ominously as the final two chords of violence very quietly reenter at the end.
(c) 2016, BRUTH Music Publishing Company.
Scriptural Text by Coogan, Michael D.; Brettler, Marc Z.; Perkins, Pheme; Newsom, Carol A.. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. © 2010 by Oxford University Press Inc. All rights reserved.
