I’m now singing my third setting of the words of Isaiah 40:6:
“All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flowers of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flowers thereof falleth away,
But the word of the Lord endureth forever.”
The first time was at a memorial service three days after 9/11. We were a choir mourning the loss of one of our own on that day, and the Hebrew Enosh is one of the most moving laments I have ever heard. Even the conclusion, that the glory of God does last forever, is part of the same, haunting line.
The second setting actually is taken from the new testament, which quotes the original passage in the context of a buoyant celebration of the fact that the resurrection makes us all imperishable. In Blessed Be the God and Father, Wesley turns those piercing old Hebrew words into melodramatically sad English ones before a terrific organ chord and the choir bursting forth with the bit about the word of the Lord enduring forever, breaking into a seemingly uncontrollable fugue in their uncontrollable joy.
Tonight we’re singing Brahms’s setting in Ein deutsches Requiem in memory of John F. Kennedy, here on the 50th anniversary of his death. Unlike the rest of the piece, much of which proceeds with a heavenly shimmer, the movement with these lyrics begins as a dirge, taking death on darkly and truly. But then before getting to the “but the word of the Lord” bit (also a bouncing fugue here) Brahms detours us through some new text, from the book of James. The verses counsel listeners to be patient and to wait for the fruit of the earth like a “husbandman,” in a playful, almost childlike waltz. It’s that earthiness, that earthly comfort, that I find so interesting here, set against text that is meant to clearly remind us that anything earthly is so transitory, even if there’s a deity that can help us transcend it all. This is somewhere in the middle — between the dust to which we return and the heavens to which we hope to ascend. You don’t often see too much of this kind of earthly comfort in requiems. Why did Brahms stick that bit in? I’m not sure but it’s one of my favorite passages in a piece brimming with some pretty amazing moments.
(Shameless plug: concert tickets at http://ow.ly/qShiQ.)
Leave a Comment