Justin Appel

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today is the feast of Saint Bartholomew, a saint about whom little is known from Gospel accounts, but who is traditionally thought to have preached in Armenia and eventually to have suffered martyrdom. In fact, Bartholomew is depicted in Michelangelo’s judgment scene in the Sistine Chapel on the lower right corner, holding his own flayed skin.

One of the psalms appointed to this feast day is Psalm 67, which allows me to introduce a choral setting of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer text by Ēriks Ešenvalds. Although this psalm enjoys special usage in the Book of Common Prayer (it is a possible substitute for the Nunc dimittis at Evensong), and although this setting was written for an Anglican Choir (Trinity College Choir, Cambridge), the music possesses a kind of brooding introspection and expressive arc that sets it apart from most Anglican psalm settings.

The opening and closing versicles have a modal melodic gesture that gives the music an upward-looking quality; however, that calm, liturgical inclusio bookends a restive middle section that sounds more like an rising interrogation:

‘O let the nations rejoice and be glad, for thou shalt judge the folk righteously…’

The central bit of music sounds something between chromatic churning and an extra-terrestrial flight of fancy, all to the opening text:

‘Let all the peoples praise thee, O God…’

leading to an astonishing climactic moment at

‘And God, even our own God, shall give us his blessing…’

Yet in none of these moments is the music obvious, self-congratulatory, or reductionistic. Rather, it is open, shifting, and varicolored: in a word, human in its importuning, its questioning, and in its awe.

This psalm could be set with trumpets, organ, and cymbals. It could be glorious and confident — one of the ‘lovely bits’ so often treated in this liturgical tradition. But really, this setting is none of those things, and I submit it has much to offer us as a result.

Yours in Christ,
Justin

(Click the link ‘See original post’ to see the video of the State Choir Latvia singing Psalm 67.)