Part 1 introduces the chord structure that governs the entire piece, and ends with the repeated words, “only your will is your own.” The second and third parts, loosely dealing with the Devil and the importance of choosing one’s words, are based on drones generated by the voices and the strings; the constant (but slightly morphing) texture is meant to be meditative and vague. I have always wanted to set the Beatitudes, and Craig has paraphrased them beautifully here; the tenors intone the word “blessed” over and over while the strings and winds reiterate the passacaglia from the opening of the piece. The fifth and final part is a series of proverbs. The orchestra begins in a series of loose, ecstatic drones, which increase in intensity (“Make your own family!”) until we jump suddenly to the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ was betrayed while his disciples slept. “Why are you sleeping? Couldn’t you stay awake for one more hour?” he asks, while the strings and winds lazily chant in the background.

MORTIFICATION
How soon doth man decay! When clothes are taken from a chest of sweets
To swaddle infants, whose young breath Scarce knows the way;
Those clouts are little winding sheets, Which do consigne and send them unto death.

When boyes go first to bed, They step into their voluntarie graves;
Sleep bindes them fast; onely their breath Makes them not dead.
Successive nights, like rolling waves, Convey them quickly, who are bound for death.

When youth is frank and free, And calls for musick, while his veins do swell,
All day exchanging mirth and breath In companie;
That musick summons to the knell, Which shall befriend him at the houre of death.
When man grows staid and wise, Getting a house and home, where he may move
Within the circle of his breath, Schooling his eyes;
That dumbe inclosure maketh love Unto the coffin, that attends his death.

When age grows low and weak, Marking his grave, and thawing ev’ry yeare,
Till all do melt, and drown his breath When he would speak;
A chair or litter shows the biere, Which shall convey him to the house of death.

Man, ere he is aware, Hath put together a somemnitie,
And drest his herse, while he has breath As yet to spare.
Yet Lord, instruct us so to die That all these dyings may be life in death.
—GEORGE HERBERT

There once was a Bird and there once was a Dog,
And the bird was Despondent, or sad,
A pensive frown on her Busy beak,
No matter that Cake could be had.

The Goat suggested a Convertible drive,
To purchase a cheering up Hat,
At a Haberdashery with a Scarlet door,
And a Baby to sell them just that.

The hats have Panache, of course, of course,
A sense of excitement and style,
The Mezzo-Soprano is done with her song,
So let’s all just eat for a while.

Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la,
And sing those tra las once more.
Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la,
Try not to get crumbs on the floor.

-Lemony Snicket

Recorded by Eve Gigliotti and Nico Muhly.

Knowing when to come in was always an adventure for me as a chorister; I memorized everything and then would get entranced by the soloists (how can you not get drawn into a line like “See, O see the fresh wounds, the gored blood, the prick of thorns, the print of nails”?) and miss my entrance. This piece, Motion, tries to capture the nervous energy of obsessive counting. The piece is built on little repeated fragments from the Gibbons, as well as an extended quotation and ornamentation of one of the verses, where the viola and the cello criss-cross one another and the other instruments create a messy grid of anxious quavers. The piece ends ecstatically, using as its primary cell Gibbons’s melody “in the sight of multitudes a glorious ascension.”

The title comes from a vision of Christ’s reign: “the blind have sight and cripples have their motion” – the word “motion,” in Gibbons’s setting (and my appropriation), comprising three syllables.

PART I THE HEREAFTER (1892)
I believe in the Hereafter. Material appetites or love for the real don’t beguile me. It’s not habit but instinct. The heavenly word will be added
to life’s imperfect sentence, otherwise inane. Respite and reward will follow upon action. When sight is forevermore closed to Creation,
the eye will be opened in the presence of the Creator. An immortal wave of life will flow from each and every Gospel of Christ—wave of life uninterrupted.

NEAR AN OPEN WINDOW
In the stillness of an autumn night, I sit near an open window, for entire hours, in a perfect, voluptuous tranquility.
The gentle rainfall of the leaves descends.
The keening of the perishable world resounds within my perishable nature,
but is a dulcet keening, rising like a prayer. My window opens up an unknown world. A fount of fragrant memories, unutterable, appears before me.
Against my window wings are beating—chill autumnal exhalations
approach me and encircle me and in their holy tongue they speak to me.
I feel vague and wide-embracing hopes; and in the hallowed silence of creation, my ears hear melodies,
hear the crystalline, the mystic music of the chorus of the stars.

PART II SEPTEMBER OF 1903 (1904)
At least let me be deceived by delusions, now, so that I might not feel my empty life. And I was so close so many times. And how I froze, and how I was afraid;
why should I remain with lips shut tight; while within me weeps my empty life, and my longings wear their mourning black. To be, so many times, so close
to the eyes, and to the sensual lips, to the dreamed of, beloved body. To be, so many times, so close.

JANUARY OF 1904 (1904)
Ah this January, this January’s nights,
when I sit and refashion in my thoughts those moments and I come upon you, and I hear our final words, and hear the first.
This January’s despairing nights, when the vision goes and leaves me all alone. How swiftly it departs and melts away— the trees go, the streets go, the houses go, the lights go: it fades and disappears, your erotic shape.
PART III 27 JUNE 1906, 2 P. M. (1908)
When the Christians brought him to be hanged, the innocent boy of seventeen, his mother, who there beside the scaffold had dragged herself and lay beaten on the ground beneath the midday sun, the savage sun,
now would moan, and howl like a wolf, a beast, and then the martyr, overcome, would keen “Seventeen years only you lived with me, my child.” And when they took him up the scaffold’s steps and passed the rope around him and strangled him, the innocent boy, seventeen years old,
and piteously it hung inside the void, with the spasms of black agony— the youthful body, beautifully wrought— his mother, martyr, wallowed on the ground and now she keened no more about his years: “Seventeen days only,” she keened, “seventeen days only I had joy of you, my child.”

IMPOSSIBLE THINGS (1897)
There is one joy alone, but one that’s blessed, one consolation only in this pain. How many thronging tawdry days were missed because of this ending; how much ennui.
A poet has said: “The loveliest music is the one that cannot be played.” And I, I daresay that by far the best life is the one that cannot be lived.
—C.P. CAVAFY
translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

O Radix Jesse, qui stas insignum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel; qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit:veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

Text

Pater Noster

Pater noster, qui es in caelis:
sanctificetur Nomen Tuum;
adveniat Regnum Tuum;
fiat voluntas Tua,
sicut in caelo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie;
et dimitte nobis debita nostra,
Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;
et ne nos inducas in tentationem;
sed libera nos a Malo. Amen.

Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

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The Principles of Uncertainty

1. What is this book? What is anything? Who am I? Who are you? What is happiness? I ask you, what is happiness? What is happiness? How could young Nabokov tolerate such displacement, such loss? How could my mother tolerate such displacement, such loss? Could my mother have married Nabokov? Would Nabokov have been good to my mother? What is the most important thing? I walk behind people who are old. How can they function? How can I help? Step. Step. Step. How are we all so brave as to take step after step day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip then get up and say O. K.

I want to grow old gracefully, naturally: is such a thing possible? The sun will explode five billion years from now: Set your watches. The man dances on salt. Why? The man is disgusted. Why can’t people tell the truth? the woman stands under a tree. How do you go mad? How do you go not mad? The truth is everybody gets on everybody’s nerves. Everybody gets on everybody’s nerves. Right? Right. Right? Right. And the cake, and the cake: It was a mocha cream cake. And the inner peace? there was zero inner peace.

2. What is this fragment? This hard wisp? of what? Of darkness of thought, or immensity of the universe? A dream? A foreboding? Was Freud right? or Wittgenstein right? Can we speak? May I say something? No? Wittgenstein designed a house for his sister. Here is the radiator. To say that he found God in the details would be an understatement But how would he define “God?” Pushkin Pushkin Pushkin “” did he die in a duel? Yes. He died in a duel. What does all this have to do with that young woman with the crazy great hairdo with four bobby pins and two rubber bands? What does this have to do with bobby pins and radiators and Kokoshniks? One thing leads to another. Spring is in the air, don’t you think?

3. The man dances on salt. A package arrives wrapped in newspaper and tied with strips of fabric. The newspaper has a phto of a man. The man is lying in the snow, dead. Here is the man. His hat flew off his head. I hope he is not really dead, just enjoying a refreshing lie-down in the snow. The woman leans over in anguish: not about that man but about all sad things; it happens quite often in February. She sings a lullaby about angels watching over the girl. You cannot help but notice that that is an awful lot of hair to wash and comb every day. The man stands behind the man. The seated man thinks, “For heaven’s sake, stop standing behind me. You are driving me mad. It’s freezing here. It’s February, and it’s impossible.” The woman stood in front of the tree before she went mad. She wrote a book, and then she went mad The woman is very ill. Her little dog never leaves her side. These twin sisters walking down the street in Budapest are cousins. There are black stripes on their sleeves. The sisters will never meet this man, but I have, and he has black stripes on the sleeves of his magnificent handstitched robe. He is a monk. On his card it says Inner Peace Center. My parents had a tea party in 1963. There was zero inner peace at this party. My parents were barely speaking. The heart breaks. Someone does or does not go mad. It is February, and all is forgiven.

4. The man asked the woman a dangerous question: “You don’t want me to kill her, do you?” I can’t ask any more questions. Was everything not said? Was everything not understood? Keep calm and carry on! Keep Was everything wrong? Will everything be wrong? Will we celebrate? Will we be kind? Will the world blow up? Will we eat egg salad sandwiches? Will we tell lies? The man asked the child, “what’s wrong?” The man asked the woman, “what’s wrong?” The child asked the parent, “What’s wrong?” The woman asked the child, “what kind of cake shall I bake for you?” What kind of cake should I bake for you? What kind of cake shall I bake for you?

Text

Like as the Hart

Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks,
so longeth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

The music begins and ends with the violin creating its own stellar landscape through a looping pedal, out of which instruments begin to articulate an unchanging series of eleven chords which governs the harmonic language of the piece. Three minutes in, the woodwinds begin twittering in what seems to be random, insect-like formations. Eventually, the piano and solo violin “map” them into the celestially pure key of C major; rapturous pulses ensue. A slightly more stylized and polite version of the insect music appears, and the violin sings long lines above it. After a brief return to the first music, slow, nervous music alternates with fast, nervous music. The fast music takes over, pitches are scattered around, the violin calls everybody back to order with forty repeated notes; rapturous pulses again ensue. The piece ends as it began, with looped educational music depicting the night sky.