Program Note
Part of a larger tradition of collective laments for the destruction of sacred cities
that dates back to Sumerian times, The Book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah is a funeral
dirge for the destruction of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. In the Catholic Church,
the texts were traditionally sung at the matins offices of the Easter Triduum, in
alternation with responses that tie the Lamentations to the final hours of the life of
Jesus. Taken as a whole, the Lamentations are a series of poems, each an acrostic on the
Hebrew alphabet; the Latin translation begins each verse retaining the names of the
Hebrew letters. Over time, two additional texts were added to it: an announcement from
the preface to the poem and a verse from the book of Hosea imploring the community to
return to the Lord.
As far back as the sixteenth century, musical settings tend to follow a particular form:
melismatic illuminated versions of the Hebrew letters interspersed with chorale-motet
settings of the Latin text, each ending with the exhortation, a structure that I’ve
largely maintained. In place of responses, I have created multiperspective collage poems
that combine verses of the Old Testament and Apocrypha with fragments from the sixth-century
'Fall of Thuringia', overheard speech, and news reports.
In setting the text, I turned to three different tuning systems: for the Hebrew letters,
I used a just intonation matrix, conceiving of each letter as an exercise in tuning; for
the remainder of the work, I developed a 24-tone functional harmonic system based on
quarter-tone scales derived from ambient sound to yield a familiar, yet alien tonality;
at times, I use a pure quasi-modality. The result is a harmonic world that is riven with
fissures, broken, diseased, and suffused with its own failures.
For better or for worse, our time seems to be one of lament: for the earth and each other,
for present lack and past wrongs. It’s my hope that my work can serve as a meaningful meditation
on our combined loss: at once intimate and communal.
Incipit Lamentatio is dedicated to Jeff Gavett and Ekmeles with admiration and respect.
Premiere:
23 March 2024
Saint Paul's Chapel at Columbia University
New York, New York