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This is the text as printed in the score, taken from the King James version of the Bible, numbers indicate verses1:
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• 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place from one generation to another.1
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• 3. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, “Return, ye children of men.”1
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• 5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.1
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• 6. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.1
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• 7. For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.1
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• 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.1
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• 9. For all our days are passed away in they wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.1
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• 11. Who knoweth the pow’r of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.1
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• 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.1
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• 13. Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.1
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• 14. O satisfy us early with they mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.1
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• 15. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.1
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• 16. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.1
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Verse by Verse Analysis via Text Declamation and Musical Intricacies
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The piece begins in C, in four four time, with a five bar introduction for the organ. Beneath the several chords in the organ part is a C pedal that is consistent throughout, not only the intro, but the entire piece. This constant C pedal mimics the eternal and ubiquitous nature of God(), ever-present and unchanging, against the backdrop of the piece, immediately establishing one of the psalm’s themes. Above the measures of organ intro are printed seemingly random captions, reading in order: “The Eternities;” “Creation;” “God’s wrath against sin;” “Prayer and Humility;” and “Rejoicing in Beauty and Work.” No written directions in the score explain these phrases’ purpose and whether or not they are to spoken and/or included in the performance in some way. However, one discovers as the Psalm begins that these are the five major themes upon which the text focuses and expounds. Perhaps Ives meant to provide a tool for the singers’ and instrumentalists’ benefit, implying that an understanding (if only rudimentary) of the messages within the text would enhance the overall performance. In the second to last intro bar, three bells and a low gong trickle into the accompaniment their ethereal strains to leave a reverent impression on the audience before the chorus begins.
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Verse 1
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The chorus enters in four parts (SATB) in measure six with the first verse and sings in unison until the last syllable of “generation,” and then split apart into complex and dissonant chords that decrescendo and become more convoluted as the phrase “to another” repeats thrice, with a final dynamic of pppp (pianissississimo, if you will). Meanwhile, a consistent pedal-like accompaniment continues in the organ, a sustained I chord (CEG) that dissolves into the ubiquitous C pedal by the end of the verse. The effect of the spreading vocal parts with the decrescendo paints the image of human beings throughout the echo of their countless generations, establishing themselves with their diversified vocal lines, but then fading into the fabric of time, represented by the fading voices.
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Verse 2
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This verse is set more like a traditional psalm, as it appears as a component of a mass or service- with an entire phrase intoned or chant-sung freely on a single pitch, with the following phrase chanted on a second pitch, and a third phrase that follows on another single, logically proceeding note- until meter is restored in m. 19 for the final powerful statement, “Thou art God.” The freedom with which the first three phrases are sung serves as a strong contrast to the final phrase, to which Ives clearly wanted to bring emphasis.
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Verse 3
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The full chorus sings the first half of this verse (“Thou turnest man to destruction”). Beginning in unison, as a collective address from mankind to God, the chorus sings the first three words, but then splits apart into a series of cacophonous chords, as in the first verse (a device used frequently in this piece), to align with the text, “to destruction,” which is repeated thrice (another thematic gesture), and accompanies the seeming destruction of harmonic convention. A tenor soloist takes the rest of the verse, “and sayest, ‘Return, ye children of men.’” The solo voice is most appropriate here because it delineates the voice of God as singular2 and separate from the mass and chaos of mankind.
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Verse 4
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All four parts of the chorus sing entirely in unison for this whole verse, with the organ providing some supporting chords beneath along with the C pedal. The voices unison symbolizes the voices of humanity speaking together, in accord, acknowledging the eternity of God, as compared to the mortality of the individual.2 The lack of separate parts illustrates that, when measured against the existence of God and earth, the relatively short span of human existence seems diminutive and insignificant; therefore no individual voices seek distinction because of such implied insignificance.
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Verse 5
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This verse sees the return of tonal clusters and complex rhythmic patterns. The phrase, “as a flood,” repeats twice, and by the second repeat, the excess of accidentals precludes any chord tones from the cadence, which indicates a key modulation (though the confusion of accidentals makes it near impossible to establish the new key). The repetition of flood with the richly textured dissonance mimics the surge and chaos of an actual flood. This piece defies the normal rules of key structure and harmonic convention continuously tempting one to say that it does not have a concrete diatonic key in which it stays, but rather a home key around which it freely revolves. After the accelerando into a mini-climactic cadence point (on “flood”), the regular tempo resumes with a pianissimo conclusion to the phrase, “they are as a sleep.” The next phrase emerges as the first polyphonic gesture in the piece. Ives has offset the SA voices and the TB voices on the phrase, “in the morning they are like grass which groweth up,” the SA voices begin half a measure before the latter. This layering effect implies the similar manner in which human generations grow and overlap as the text describes, comparing man to blades of grass, which constantly renew and reseed.2
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Verse 6
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The polyphonic layering from Verse 5 carries over into this verse, with the SA and TB parts set a beat off from each other to begin the verse. To match the text in the most literal way possible, all four parts leap up considerably (+7ths in all parts) on the word, “up.” The contour of the line continues to match the implications in the text as the tenors descend to the word “withereth,” and the basses echo the word on ritard in ppp. The vocal line withers, diminishes almost to nothing, just as the blades of grass, mankind in his mortality, at the hand of God.
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Verse 7
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This verse’s violent diction (ex. “consumed,” anger,” “wrath”) is met by the equally abrasive dissonance, driving rhythm, and fortissimo in the music. The chords spread and peak on a high G# for the sopranos, the highest pitch of the piece thus far, on the third repeat of the word “wrath” to obviously convey the power and intensity of the therein. The last words of the verse, “are we troubled,” a continuation of the previous phrase, are separated from the aural assault of the word “wrath” by an 8th rest and a dynamic change to piano, a dramatic change to convey the humility instilled by God’s power (for the words are still addressing God from the voice of mankind).
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Verse 8
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The basses have the first half of this verse to themselves, “Thou has set…our secret sins,” in a descending line that spans an octave (G3 to G2). The descent of this line coincides well with the negative self-degradation in the text and serves as a bold contrast to the ascent of the rest of the line. The ascent occurs while describing “the light of [God’s] countenance,” showing how submissive and reverential man proves in God’s presence, humbling himself and elevating any mention of God.
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Verse 9
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Perhaps the most singular verse of the piece, Ives totally abandoned convention in verse 9. Little numbers are printed above each individual word, beginning with 9, all the way down to 1. These numbers indicate the durations of each note. Thus the phrase accelerates while it ascends in pitch and splits apart into a divisi of 22 separate notes on the word “wrath,” which is held with a fermata. As the larges, most complex chord, coupled with the ascent to tutta forza, this moment stands out as one of the climaxes of the piece. There is pleasing symmetry in the following descent, a reverse of the action that just occurred, the durations of each note lengthening from 1 to 9 as the line goes back to C (E for the tenors) where it began. The ascending line accompanies the statement that human life is forever at the mercy of God’s judgment.2 This terrifying thought is expressed by the music in the building of tension with dissonance until the climactic moment when all pitches are blurred into an eruption of cacophonous angst. The parts melt back together on the way back down to the starting point, as if erasing the previous phrase. This serves to illustrate the idea that all of the suffering and fear of God’s judgment is meaningless in its brevity and in its inability to affect our verdict.
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Verse 10
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Like verse 2, verse 10 complies with the traditional setting and form of psalm from its origins in church service. The first half is chant-sung with whole phrases on single notes, from “The days….fourscore years.” The free chant-like quality and long phrases of these lines suits the text because it speaks of man desiring long life. But a change occurs when the chorus sings, “yet…” because here the speaker(s) realizes that a longer life means more trials and sorrows, and here the line descends and breaks after the words, “cut off” (literal text painting). The sopranos conclude the verse with the line, “we fly away,” an ascending phrase in pianissimo that seems literally tossed away, thus mimicking the flight of the soul after death.
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Verse 11
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If there is another climax in the piece, this verse fits the description in that it ends on an A in the soprano part, the highest note in the piece, and the concept it conveys is truly fearsome. The text describes how the depth of God’s fury is inconceivable to man, and even our greatest fears cannot do justice to the actual wrath He can inflict. The words “anger,” “fear,” and “wrath” are rightfully emphasized and assigned to the highest notes in the phrase, each one successively higher than the last. Triple forte characterizes the final word and helps express the loss of composure one feels in the face of such fear and powerlessness to the will of God.
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Verse 12
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This short verse expresses man’s submission, the consequent desire for peace with one’s mortality, and a petition for God’s help and guidance through the struggles of life.2
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Verse 13
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A soprano solo takes this verse, calling one’s mind back to the 3rd verse with its tenor solo. This solo strikes a similar chord with the tenor, as it begins with the word, “Return,” however, this time it is the people requesting God’s return, rather than God mandating to them.2 This voice pleads to be heard by God, therefore rises out of the mass of other voices to make the direct appeal for His mercy.
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Verses 14,15,16,17
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These verses mark a transition into the last theme of the piece, introduced at the beginning, that of “Rejoicing in Beauty and Work.” The tone and mood of the music shifts to a more serene, peaceful chorale, almost in unison. The church bells and gong return in the accompaniment, further transforming the previous tension and explosiveness of the previous verses into a blending, consonant prayer/resolution. The new tone assists in declaiming the text, as the psalm itself asks for satisfaction, peace, and due happiness as God sees fit to bestow. The psalm here accedes to God’s power, stating the outright submission of the human soul to his will by referring to humans as “servants,” and in this submission man hopes to achieve the beauty and salvation God offers to the faithful.2 The softness of the vocal lines imitates the revered tone reserved for church, while the bells also allude to a church service. Thus as mankind resolves to submit to God, the music clearly evokes an image of church as the venue for his servitude, the setting of his penance.
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Lasting Impressions
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According to Ives' wife, Harmony, his Psalm 90 was "the only one of his works that satisfied him."3 Why this is, one could only speculate. Ives came from a devoutly Protestant background. He worked as a church organist and choirmaster for many years, throughout his youth and maturity. Perhaps he felt that this piece not only communicated to the soul, a principle by which he resolutely lived and worked, but that it also communicated from his own soul the private fears and beliefs amassed from a strong religious tradition and an afflicted artistic spirit.
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1Ives, Charles. “Psalm 90.” Ed. by John Kirkpatrick and Gregg Smith. Bryn Mawr, Pa: Merion Music Inc., 1970.
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2Spurgeon, Charles H. “Treasury of David: Psalm 90.” Pilgrim Publications. 1885. 12 Feb. 2008.
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3Swafford, Jan. “Charles Edward Ives.” Peer Music, Ltd. 1998. 12 Feb. 2008.
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'The Orphan Master’s Son' by Adam Johnson: Review
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With the death of Kim Jong-il all eyes are on the bizarre North Korean regime, but the best way to understand the country is probably Adam Johnson’s remarkable new novel, “The Orphan Master’s Son.” By Taylor Antrim.
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Why don’t more novelists write about North Korea? The morbid fascinations are endless—a police state with an automaton citizenry, a landscape of Stalinist gulags and eerily empty superhighways, a (departed) Dear Leader fond of kidnappings and cognac who famously shot 38 under par on his first round of golf. Celebrated works of journalism on the DPRK abound, but the fiction shelf (notwithstanding a few potboiler thrillers and, ahem, my first novel—about a North Korea-obsessed boarding-school headmaster) is pretty bare.
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Or was. Now there’s Adam Johnson’s magnificently accomplished, slightly lunatic The Orphan Master’s Son—which arrives miraculously timed to the news cycle. With footage of Kim Jong-il’s funeral capturing national paroxysms of showy grief, with the apple-cheeked heir, Kim Jong-un, and his poker-faced uncle in a presumed power ballet with the military, our North Korea interest is at a high pitch. And Johnson, whose debut collection Emporium was one of the best books of the early aughts, gives it to us with a fiction writer’s eye for detail: the blast of “shock-work whistles” at a cannery, the clammy feel of seawater in the hold of a fishing boat, the delicate flavor of a soup made with scavenged herbs. Part thriller, part coming-of-age novel, part romance, The Orphan Master’s Son is made sturdy by research—Johnson traveled to Pyongyang in 2007—but what makes it so absorbing isn’t its documentary realism but the dark flight of the author’s imagination.
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Nothing here will challenge the prevailing American view of the DPRK—a human nightmare, deserving of its pariah status—but Johnson’s novel is rich with a sense of discovery nevertheless.
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The plot might be called picaresque if it wasn’t so deliriously grim. Our protagonist, Pak Jun Do, grows up in an orphanage, where his father, the orphan master, won’t acknowledge him, and then he’s recruited by a military DMZ tunnel squad and taught to kill in the dark. Next he’s put on a series of kidnapping missions to Japan, then tasked with collecting radio intelligence aboard a fishing boat, then brought along on a diplomatic mission to Texas. Johnson describes these hectic, frightening chapters in Jun Do’s life with extraordinary skill and economy. It’s a breathlessly exciting 175 pages that establishes North Korea as a ghastly funhouse of paranoia, violence, and absurdity. For instance, when the second mate defects from Jun Do’s boat, the captain decides the best way to throw their government minders off the scent of treachery … is to feed Jun Do’s (still attached) arm to a line-caught shark. Jun Do survives that ordeal, along with a vicious debriefing by an official whose occupation has turned his fists into mangled clubs. Heroically Jun Do retains a core of goodness through his beatings and mistreatment—he’s curious and empathetic in a world where both qualities can get you killed.
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Midway through, the novel abandons its linear structure. Time fractures, new characters are introduced—including a nicely drawn pair of rival torture squads—and a series of government radio bulletins cleverly interrupts the storytelling. Jun Do—spoiler alert!—has remade himself as Commander Ga, an apparatchik with a movie-star wife and a government position that puts him in routine contact with the Dear Leader himself (here a clever, ruthless manipulator who’s unambiguously villainous). It’s a long book, but only feels so when Johnson lets a strained, Casablanca-inspired romance dominate his final 100 pages. Johnson is much too inventive and daring to rely on Hollywood clichés—and yet he hammers a "love conquers all!" theme to mawkish effect in the final act.
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It’s a finishing-straight stumble, but the book succeeds in spite of it. The Orphan Master’s Son is potent with visions of oppression and generalized fear. Johnson is unflinching (even a bit enthusiastic) rendering torture, but his sensitivity to Jun Do’s resilient spirit makes his work as big-hearted as it is horrifying. A few images have haunted me for days—Jun Do, at sea, dazzled by a trans-Pacific cargo ship carpeted with new cars: “the moonlight flashed in rapid succession off a thousand new windshields.” And starving scavengers glimpsed in a government graveyard: “in the long shadows cast by the bronze headstones moved occasional men and women. In the growing dark, these ghostly figures, keeping low and moving quickly, were gathering all the flowers from the graves.”
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Nothing here will challenge the prevailing American view of the DPRK—a human nightmare, deserving of its pariah status—but Johnson’s novel is rich with a sense of discovery nevertheless. The year is young, but The Orphan Master’s Son has an early lead on novel of 2012.
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Syria crisis widens faultlines at divided UN
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As 120 world leaders make annual trip to UN headquarters, unusually bitter atmosphere has been compared to cold war
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UN general assembly
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Ther UN general assembly meets this week in New York, but seldom since the end of the cold war has the institution seemed so biitterly divided. Photograph: Shen Hong/ Shen Hong/Xinhua Press/Corbis
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The police barricades are up and the traffic has begun to congeal across midtown Manhattan as more than 120 world leaders make their annual pilgrimage to the UN headquarters to declaim, appeal, cajole and sometimes threaten each other.
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It is seldom an edifying spectacle but the mood this year is so sour it is being compared to the cold war.
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The root of the bitterness lies in the worsening Syrian conflict, which has divided the security council to the point of paralysis along familiar faultlines. Russia and China have vetoed three resolutions in a row aimed at curbing the slaughter, and the council has not even been able to agree on humanitarian relief.
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The conflict is already spilling over Syria's borders, at a time when another Middle East conflict, possibly with even darker consequences, is constantly threatening to break out between Israel and Iran. Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are both in New York this week to deliver speeches more likely to stoke than soothe the gathering fear of war. The world's powers have no coherent response.
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France's UN ambassador, Gérard Araud, setting the scene at the UN Turtle Bay headquarters before this week's general assembly, said the security council "has never been as paralysed as it is today since the end of the cold war".
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The key players are distancing themselves from the unfolding debacle. Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao are not coming at all. Barack Obama is expected to make a "drive-by" appearance, with a stern speech on Tuesday very much with UN-averse American voters in mind. He will not stick around for lunch or for the customary round of bilateral meetings with other leaders, leaving that to Hillary Clinton.
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Even the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, normally a byword for courtesy and euphemism, is expected to issue an impatient rebuke to the global statesmen in the chamber for their fecklessness when he opens the session. Aides are describing the address as "no more Mr Nice Guy".
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If there was ever a moment for speaking out, this is probably it. The security council is no stranger to impasse, but seldom has the deadlock come at such a high human cost. The death toll in Syria by UN estimates is 20,000 and climbing sharply, and 1.5 million civilians, probably far more, have fled their homes.
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Abeer Etefa, a World Food Programme officer who visited Homs and other areas last week, said: "People are constantly on the move. Some have moved two or three times trying to escape the violence. There are 35 people in an apartment in some places, living in places with no doors or windows. They badly need blankets and baby milk."
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Leila Zerrougui, the UN special representative on children in conflict, warned the security council last week that children were suffering disproportionately, saying UN agencies had "documented government attacks on schools, children denied access to hospitals, girls and boys suffering and dying in bombardments of their neighbourhoods and also being subject to torture, including sexual violence".
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Human Rights Watch has reported that government forces appear to be deliberately targeting bread queues, citing 10 cases of artillery bombardment or air strikes outside bakeries in Aleppo province in August alone.
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Reporting by human rights groups and the UN itself has consistently found that the overwhelming majority of atrocities in the Syrian conflict have been committed by forces loyal to the president, Bashar al-Assad, although abuses by the fragmented rebel groups are also on the rise as the conflict spirals.
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In the face of clear evidence of abuses by the Syrian regime, however, both Russia and China have adamantly refused to support any security council resolutions that pressure Assad, even when the wording excludes military action. They are also not prepared to discuss authorising an international criminal court investigation into the war crimes committed by all sides.
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Even after Zerrougui gave her chilling briefing last week on the killing and torture of children, the response of the Russians and Chinese, together with Pakistan and Azerbaijan, was to seek (unsuccessfully) to restrict the scope of the UN envoy's inquiries and to refuse to back an annual resolution condemning the use of child soldiers and the deaths of children in conflict. Michael Williams, who served both as UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process and for Lebanon, said: "I hope that in the margins in New York there would be some possibility to engage with the Russians and Chinese, but I'm not going to hold my breath."
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There are many factors underpinning Moscow and Beijing's hard line. Damascus has long been a Russian ally, and a buyer of Russian arms. The Syrian port of Tartus is the only Russian military base outside the former Soviet Union and its sole foothold in the Mediterranean. Both Russia and China feel badly burned by allowing security council resolution 1973 to pass in March 2011 authorising "all necessary measures" to protect Libyan civilians, which was then used by Nato as a mandate to help topple Muammar Gaddafi.
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The ghosts of the 2003 Iraq invasion and the furious debates that preceded it still hang in the air. Even though it was not fought on humanitarian grounds but rather on spurious claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the fiasco and subsequent US and British attempts to justify it helped reverse what was arguably one of the great moral advances of the post-cold-war era: the UN-backed principle that the international community had the "responsibility to protect" civilian populations when their own states were unable or unwilling to.
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"The whole concept of responsibility to protect has been forgotten and no one among the statesmen here has the courage to utter the words," Williams said.
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He also criticised the west for giving up on diplomacy in the face of Russian and Chinese resistance. "Even compared with the old cold war days, there doesn't seem to be much active diplomacy to engage Russia and China. And there is a complete absence of the EU as a political actor," Williams said.
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"The tragedy is that the security council has not given diplomacy a chance in the case of Syria," Mark Malloch Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general, said. He argued that a tentative deal between the west, Russia and China in Geneva in June – by which the specific demand for Assad to step down was omitted in favour of the backing for a new government in Damascus by "mutual consent" – could have provided the basis for a settlement.
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"There was a road map forward," Malloch Brown said, adding that the US, Britain and France "got caught up in the theology" of trying to pass a "chapter 7" involving sanctions, and so divided the security council once again. Western diplomats counter that the Assad regime has shown it would use any agreement not enforced by sanctions as cover to buy time and intensify its counter-insurgency.
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Wherever the exact balance of blame lies, it is directed at the major powers in the security council rather than the UN as an institution. UN agencies such as the high commission for refugees and the World Food Programme are widely agreed to have performed as well as could be expected in Syria, hampered by severe restrictions on access and a critical lack of emergency funding from donors.
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However, Richard Gowan, an expert on the UN at New York University, said the security council had been effective on other fronts.
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"The paradox is that while the council has been paralysed over Syria, it has worked pretty efficiently on other issues this year. It has headed off a war between Sudan and South Sudan, and has provided a lot of co-ordination of peacekeeping operations in Africa. In Libya, it has helped the creation of the post-Gaddafi state," Gowan said, adding that, notwithstanding the ominous echoes over Syria: "We are not back in the cold war."
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But he admitted: "Everything else is absolutely overshadowed by Syria. Let there be no doubt that for many countries the Syrian crisis is really corroding high-level trust in the security council. And what is really looming on the horizon is a crisis over Iran."
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User reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (7,578 reviews)
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Release Date: Sep 8, 2010
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Buy Amnesia: The Dark Descent
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