Jaakko Mäntyjärvi - Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen? | Choir of Trinity College Cambridge

Описание: The Choir are pleased to share another extract from our most recent disc, "Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen?" — second of the three Stuttgarter Psalmen by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi.

Mäntyjärvi's second setting employs a recurring motif that accompanies the opening line of Psalm 22, “Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen?” [My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?] Contrary to the psalm, but in recognition of Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels, Mäntyjärvi follows up every German occurrence of this text with its Hebrew counterpart as uttered by Jesus on the cross: “Eli, Eli, lama asabthani?” The German mantra recurs in a variety of emotional guises from its stern opening, through its use as a tender accompaniment and to the hysterical scream of someone experiencing deep psychological trauma. However, the Hebrew addendum, which is always set for an upper-voice trio, is consistently calm, never loud, and always profoundly personal.

In many ways, this psalm setting is Mäntyjärvi’s most ‘poetic.’ It draws on a variety of influences throughout, some stylistic and some direct. The music at “Er klage es dem Herrn” [He trusted in God], for example, is lifted directly from the movement of the same name in Handel’s Messiah; the section beginning “Rühmet den Herrn” [O Praise the Lord] is as if a passage from a composition by Schütz, albeit with the occasional Schoenbergian cadence thrown in for good measure; and remnants of Messiaen are found in the cluster chords that accompany the deranged alto solo at “Denn Hunde haben mich umgeben” [For many dogs are come about me].

Two main melodic ideas dominate the piece, both of which are masterful reflections on their respective texts. The first pertains to the verses of the lost and weak: “Ich heule, aber meine Hilfe ist fern” [I cry, but my help is far away], “Ich aber bin ein Wurm und kein mensch” [I am a worm and no man]. It always consists a soloistic alto line shadowed by the bass, which roams, moans and meanders lost and entangled within itself, directionless and tentative. The second idea is another Wagnerian venture encased in a slow sarabande dance that, with its inherited rhythmic impetus, lends it purpose and direction wholly absent in the first theme. This melodic content comprises some of the most ‘romantic’ music of all three psalms and it appears with more optimistic and hopeful texts, “Unsere Väter hofften auf dich” [Our fathers hoped in thee] and, reaching a fuller maturity, at “Ich will deinen Namen” [I will declare thy name].

The setting of the Gloria is familiar from Mäntyjärvi's Psalm 2 and is indeed the palpable link between all three settings. This iteration, like in the first psalm, sits below the main melodic material. In this case it is that belonging to the lost and weak, but unlike the first psalm, it retains its original sentiment despite being in the Gloria. The “Amen” is extremely concise (only two bars), but still contains enough harmonic colour to make one shiver. This is, however, the only setting of the three not to end with the “amen”. It concludes instead with Jesus’ final words: a distant, but poignant echo propelled from the Old Testament psalm through to the New Testament gospels, and reaching us listening in the twenty-first century.

Full text and translations:
http://trinitycollegechoir.com/media/...


To download on iTunes:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/mänt...

To purchase CDs and high-quality digital audio directly from the Hyperion website:
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The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge
Conductor: Stephen Layton