Litanie (2025)
soprano, violin, cello, piano
soprano, violin, cello, piano
Program Note When a gunman entered the Faculty of Arts building of Charles University in Prague on December 21, 2023, fifteen people were killed, including Prof. Lenka Hlávková, head of the Institute of Musicology at the university. Three years after her death, a memorial concert was organized by the Washington Square Contemporary Music Series in New York City to honor her memory by commissioning new works “focusing on a theme dear to Prof. Hlávková: using music of the past to inspire contemporary composition.” Litanie (pronounced in Czech: LIT-ah-nee-eh) seeks to achieve that end by weaving together newly composed music with material from two religious works common in seventeenth-century Bohemia: the Litany of Loreto, a set of prayers in Latin popularized after the building of the Prague Loreta in 1631; and the hymn O Očišťování blahoslavené Panny Marie (On the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary) from Adam Michna z Otradovic’s Svatoroční muzika of 1661. Although Michna’s melody appears frequently throughout this piece, I took care never to present his text simultaneously with his music. Either his music is quoted in a purely instrumental manner (for example, the opening violin and cello section), or it accompanies the Latin text of the Litany of Loreto. When Michna’s Czech words do appear, they are set to my own original music. The result, hopefully, is a soundworld which blurs the new and the old, reaching across the centuries to repeat timeless ideas in a new way. Laudetur Jesus Christus. |
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TEXT
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Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Pater de caelis Deus, miserere nobis. Chudoba s Poníženosti dnes potýkání měla, užívajíc své chytrosti, každá svítězit chtěla. Ó slavné potýkání dvouch ctnosti jedné paní! Mater divinae gratiae; Mater, sedes sapientiae; Mater purissima; Mater castissima. Nad tě čistější nebylo, Maria, nalezeno. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, parce nobis Domine. Ora pro nobis, Maria, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Alleluia. |
Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. God, the Father of heaven, have mercy on us. Poverty and Humility had a struggle today, using their cleverness, each wanted to win. O glorious struggle of two virtues in one lady! Mother of divine grace; Mother, seat of wisdom; Mother most pure; Mother most chaste. Nothing purer than you, Mary, has been found. Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, spare us, O Lord. Pray for us, Mary, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Alleluia. |
