PSALM
OFFERINGS
OPUS 7
“The Lamentations Psalm Offerings”
By Deacon Bob Wagner OFS
Music composed by Deacon Bob Wagner, OFS. © 2017 BRUTH Music Publishing Company, New Prague, Minnesota. All rights reserved.
Text by Deacon Bob Wagner, OFS. © 2017, BRUTH Music Publishing Company, New Prague, Minnesota. All rights Reserved.
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.
Introduction
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25: 31-46, NRSV)
The composing of these Psalm Offerings commenced with the police shooting of Philando Castille in early July of 2016. I began to reflect on this scriptural passage from Matthew’s Gospel and how miserably humanity, especially those who identify themselves as Christian, have failed to love God by ignoring the presence of God in the most vulnerable of our society. The tremendous misery perpetrated upon innocent human beings by other human beings is overwhelming. Statistics cannot begin to adequately express the ongoing tragedy of these crimes against humanity. I went to the beautiful poem entitled “On A Theme From Julian’s Chapter XX” in which the poet, Denise Levertov meditates on the death of Jesus on the cross.
“One only is ‘King of Grief’.
The onening, she saw, the onening
with the Godhead opened Him utterly
to the pain of all minds, all bodies
– sands of the sea, of the desert –
from first beginning
to last day. The great wonder is
that the human cells of His flesh and bone
didn’t explode
when utmost Imagination rose
in that flood of knowledge. Unique
in agony, infinite strength, Incarnate,
empowered Him to endure
inside of history,
through those hours when He took Himself
the sum total of anguish and drank
even the lees of that cup:”
(BREATHING THE WATER, by Denise Levertov, A New Directions Book, © 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987 by Denise Levertov)
I began to envision the compositions in this Opus as a contemporary musical expression of Lamentation. One might say these musical compositions are my therapy, my way of coping with the increasing disregard for the plight of vulnerable people that seemingly has escalated since the elections of November, 2016. Each Psalm Offering a dedicated prayer to the victims of modern day sin.
Lest one say that this is too political, quite simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ is very political. The Gospel is not political in the sense of supporting one ideology over another, or one political party over another. However, all ideologies and all political parties must always be evaluated in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To fail to address the failings or the sins of an ideology or a political party is to render the Gospel mute. The failure of the Christian Church to challenge Hitler and the Nazi Party is a black mark against the Church. Only a few chose to stand up to Hitler and the Nazis, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe OFM and Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer the most notable of these chosen few, and they suffered martyrdom for the Gospel as a result. In the recent past, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Caesar Chavev, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr have also challenged politically unjust systems and have suffered imprisonment, and in the case of Romero and King, martyrdom.
ABOUT THE SCRIPTURE:
The Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Testament is attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. In this setting of five poems, the author laments the utter destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, reducing the Jewish people to destitution and sending the remainder off into slavery to Babylon. The author recognizes that it is God who destroyed unfaithful Judah, the Babylonians being the means by which God wreaked destruction upon Judah. One might draw a parallel between the fate of Judah in Lamentations and the spiral downward path that the United States is now taking.
Admittedly, I have used the Lamentation passages that introduce the musical Lamentation out of its scriptural context. However, the raw emotion of the passage describes in a visceral way the plight of the victims for whom this collection of Psalm Offerings is offered as a musical prayer.
ABOUT THE MUSIC:
The majority of the music to which we listen is composed in either a major or a minor scale. These two primary scales that form the melodies of our music have a system of whole steps and half steps that determine whether the melody is major (think happy) or minor (sad).
I have chosen to write the majority of the melodies for these musical compositions not in these primary scales of music, but in the more obscure scales of the Greeks, in which the whole steps and half steps are out of their normal sequence. These scales are called “modes.” In some of the music, particularly Psalm Offering 1, there is atonality, that is a melody or harmony without any reference to a scale. The dissonance of its atonality is brutally harsh, reflective of the violence perpetuated on humanity by weapons of any sort. In Psalm Offering 7, I make primary use of a whole tone scale for the melody in which there are no half steps.
The use of the Greek modes lends an esoteric quality to the melodies that seem to our modern ear “out of place.” It is this quality I wished the music to express as a lament for the victims to whom the Psalm Offering is offered as prayer.
The music is similar to the composition of the music in Opus 3. Unlike the harmonies and melodies of the other Opuses, the music of this Opus has a sharper edge to it. There is an ambiguity of harmony, and melodies not as clearly defined as in other music, reflective of the malaise that has descended upon our humanity. I mourn this time of human violence, greed, and malicious intent against the vulnerable of our world, the music is a call for lamentation and a prayer for conversion.
