El Salto 2
PROGRAM (scroll down for full TEXTS and AUDIO): Opening Congregational Song Mellissa Hughes and Ian Howell, cantors First Reading: Qur’an, Sura 99: “The Quaking” trans. Michael Sells, from Approaching the Qur’án: The Early Revelations First Musical Presentation: Lacrymosa by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky Second Reading: The Law of Human Nature by C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity Second Musical Presentation: Desired Constellation by Björk, from Medulla Short Talk: Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet by Robin McClellan Third Musical Presentation: String Quartet No. 8, Fifth Movement by Dmitri Shostakovich by Moya Cannon, from Carrying the Songs Closing Congregational Song Mellissa Hughes and Ian Howell, cantors
TEXTS: Opening Congregational Music: El Salto Song 2 Cantors (v1) We cry out in joyful, solemn song All (v2) We leap ahead, within, beyond 2 Cantors (v1) Our proud harmony casts a searching light All (v2) We leap ahead, within, beyond All (v1) We with golden sound will reveal All (v2) We leap ahead, within, beyond
First Reading: Qur’án, Sura 99: “The Quaking” In the Name of God the Compassionate the Caring [Translator’s commentary on Sura 99:] The Day of Reckoning (yawm ad-din)...is the primary subject of the early Meccan Suras. The word translated here as reckoning (din) is related to a number of terms for borrowing and payment of debt, as well as to terms for religion and faith. The word for day (yawm) also can be a more general term for any length of time or a moment in time. The term has been translated as “day of judgment” and “day of accounting.” But it also has an implication similar to the “moment of truth”–that is, a time of indeterminate duration in which each soul will encounter the fundamental reality that normal consciousness masks. At that moment each person will know what he or she has given and held back, and every “mote’s weight” of kindness or meanness will take on its status as one’s true self and destiny in a moment of revelation and finality.
First Musical Presentation: Lacrymosa Lacrymosa dies illa, Pie Jesu Domine, What tears on that day Merciful Lord Jesus,
Second Reading: The Law of Human Nature Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?" "That's my seat, I was there first" "Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm" "Why should you shove in first?" "Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine" "Come on, you promised." ... Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse ... It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. ... Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature ... because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it ... they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were right. ... Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if I treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong in other words, if there is no Law of Nature what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on to my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the law of Nature ... this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money, the one you have almost forgotten came when you were very hard up ... And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister (or brother)– if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at it–and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? ... These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; but they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
Second Musical Presentation: Desired Constellation It's tricky when It's slippery when How am I going to make it right? With a palm full of stars How am I going to make it right?
Short Talk by Robin McClellan In 1934, the young Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich rose quickly to the top of his profession with the wild success of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mt-Sense District. Two years later, at the height of the Great Terror in Soviet Russia, in which intellectuals and artists were intimidated, deported, or murdered, Joseph Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich’s opera. A week later, an unsigned letter appeared in a prominent paper which condemned the opera as “muddled” and “leftist”. In the atmosphere of terror and apprehension Stalin cultivated, the letter served as a clear warning to Shostakovich. The opera was stopped and Shostakovich fell from favor in artistic and political circles. During the next few decades, and especially after Stalin’s death in 1953, Shostakovich gradually regained to his position of favor in Russian musical life. But he never really trusted the Soviet political system after that. In 1960, he came under direct pressure to join the Communist party. We don’t know his true feelings about this difficult choice because he never wrote about them, but his close friends report that the pressure to join the party caused Shostakovich to feel an acute sense of inner conflict and shame. It became, for him, a terrible moral choice. The Communist leadership, by now, allowed him to write the music he wanted to write and to live the life he wanted to live. Joining the regime meant not only preserving his freedom both personally and artistically—it also meant preserving his ability to express his views freely through his music, something he could not do in words. So–should he refuse to join, placing his artistic life and well-being, not to mention the safety of his family and friends, at the mercy of the Communist regime??? In the midst of this dilemma, in just three days of furiously intense work, Shostakovich composed the piece you’re about to hear—his famous 8th String Quartet. To placate the Communist party, Shostakovich said that the piece was written to condemn Fascism. But those close to him knew that the work was a response to the terrible inner moral conflict he had been thrust into. But as outside observers, WE could argue, just as easily, that the choice Shostakovich made represented his adherence to a different and opposite–but equally true–moral choice. We could say that perhaps it WAS morally right to join a repressive, violent regime if it meant that he could continue to contribute to the world in the best way he knew how: by expressing himself through his music. This is the point I want to make: I think it is perfectly valid to view his decision as a legitimate effort to uphold a different, but just as correct, moral standard. I believe Shostakovich did the right thing. Whether or not you agree with me, Shostakovich’s story shows us that not all moral choices are obvious. A great many are not so clear—nor could they be, for all our wishing. Many choices we face every day are, by nature, immensely complex, endlessly ambiguous, and very often have two conflicting but correct sides. Let the music you’re about to hear stand as an illustration in sound—of this timeless problem. Third Musical Presentation: String Quartet No. 8, Fifth Movement
Third Reading: Orientation A flock of seagulls Crystals in cooling magma For us, who carry, the carnage of our last century towards which some primal grain in us but, within the time which comprehends us,
Closing Congregational Music: El Salto Song 2 Cantors (v1) We cry out in joyful, solemn song All (v2) We leap ahead, within, beyond 2 Cantors (v1) Our proud harmony casts a searching light All (v2) We leap ahead, within, beyond All (v1) We with golden sound will reveal All (v2) We leap ahead, within, beyond
About the Composers and Writers Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky (b. April 1963, Tashkent). Uzbek composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electroacoustic works. He is also very active in the promotion of contemporary music. Mr. Yanov-Yanovsky graduated from the Tashkent State Conservatory in 1986, where he took composition and instrumentation classes with his father, Felix Yanov-Yanovsky. Iceland's premiere sonic adventurer Björk shone as a star-in-the-making as one of the lead vocalists in the avant-pop sextet The Sugarcubes. Her old group disbanded in 1993 and soon after the raven-haired songstress released her first solo record, Debut. A steady stream of innovative albums and music videos followed, defining her unclassifiable blend of electronica, pop, jazz, and exotica–or, as she calls it, " Björk music." In 2004, Bjork released her newest album Medulla, made mainly with her own voice processed through various electronic effects. Bio adapted from the iTunes music store Dmitri Shostakovich belongs to the generation of composers trained principally after the Communist Revolution of 1917. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory as a pianist and composer, his First Symphony winning immediate favor. His subsequent career in Russia varied with the political climate. The initial success of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, based on Leskov, and later revised as Katerina Ismailova, was followed by official condemnation, emanating apparently from Stalin himself. The composer's Fifth Symphony, in 1937, brought partial rehabilitation, while the war years offered a propaganda coup in the Leningrad Symphony, performed in the city under German siege. In 1948 he fell foul of the official musical establishment with a Ninth Symphony thought to be frivolous, but enjoyed the relative freedom following the death of Stalin in 1953. Outwardly and inevitably conforming to official policy, posthumous information suggests that Shostakovich remained very critical of Stalinist dictates, particularly with regard to music and the arts. He occupies a significant position in the 20th century as a symphonist and as a composer of chamber music, writing in a style that is sometimes spare in texture but always accessible, couched as it is in an extension of traditional tonal musical language. Bio from www.naxos.com C.S. Lewis was a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge universities who wrote well-known books such as The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia. Moya Cannon’s poetry has received the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, and her work has been published by Salmon Publishing and Gallery Press. She lives in Galway, Ireland. Michael Sells is a professor of religion at Haverford College. He is the author of books on subjects including Islamic Mysticism, genocide in Bosnia, and Arabic literature.
Our Performers The Organizers Special thanks to: |