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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: |
• 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place from one generation to another.1 |
• 3. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, “Return, ye children of men.”1 |
• 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 |
• 6. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.1 |
• 7. For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.1 |
• 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.1 |
• 9. For all our days are passed away in they wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.1 |
• 11. Who knoweth the pow’r of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.1 |
• 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.1 |
• 13. Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.1 |
• 14. O satisfy us early with they mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.1 |
• 15. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.1 |
• 16. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.1 |
Verse by Verse Analysis via Text Declamation and Musical Intricacies |
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, a... |
Verse 1 |
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 (pianississis... |
Verse 2 |
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 rest... |
Verse 3 |
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 ... |
Verse 4 |
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... |
Verse 5 |
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... |
Verse 6 |
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 im... |
Verse 7 |
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 ... |
Verse 8 |
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 ... |
Verse 9 |
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 div... |
Verse 10 |
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 desiri... |
Verse 11 |
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 ... |
Verse 12 |
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 |
Verse 13 |
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, th... |
Verses 14,15,16,17 |
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 tensi... |
Lasting Impressions |
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 no... |
1Ives, Charles. “Psalm 90.” Ed. by John Kirkpatrick and Gregg Smith. Bryn Mawr, Pa: Merion Music Inc., 1970. |
2Spurgeon, Charles H. “Treasury of David: Psalm 90.” Pilgrim Publications. 1885. 12 Feb. 2008. |
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 |
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. |
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 ... |
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... |
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 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... |
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 mo... |
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 horrifyi... |
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. |
Syria crisis widens faultlines at divided UN |
As 120 world leaders make annual trip to UN headquarters, unusually bitter atmosphere has been compared to cold war |
UN general assembly |
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 |
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. |
It is seldom an edifying spectacle but the mood this year is so sour it is being compared to the cold war. |
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. |
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 t... |
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". |
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 rou... |
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". |
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. |
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 ... |
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 thei... |
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. |
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. |
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 investiga... |
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 ... |
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 allow... |
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 ... |
"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. |
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. |
"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 favo... |
"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 enforce... |
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 restr... |
However, Richard Gowan, an expert on the UN at New York University, said the security council had been effective on other fronts. |
"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 ... |
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." |
User reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (7,578 reviews) |
Release Date: Sep 8, 2010 |
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