Tuesday Evening Melody: “Trinity Requiem”
by Chris Heagle, technical director
As the tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11th approaches, we’re continuing to plan for our event at St. Paul’s Chapel on September 6th. Co-produced with Trinity Wall Street, the public dialogue is called “Who Do We Want to Become? Remembering Forward a Decade After 9/11.” Three public intellectuals, Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker, Serene Jones of Union Theological Seminary, and the author Pankaj Mishra, will speak with Krista for an hour and then answer questions from our in-house and online audiences.
And, so it was a pleasant coincidence that just after returning from a scouting trip to the chapel, a colleague handed me a CD of Robert Moran’s Trinity Requiem. Trinity commissioned the Denver-born composer to write a piece for their youth chorus commemorating 9/11. The result, which will be released September 6th, is a lush work for voice, organ, harp, and cello. The track above is actually two — the “Offertory” followed by “In Paradisum.”
The former is a variation on Pachelbel’s famous “Canon in D.” During the recording sessions in Trinity’s downtown sanctuary, as if on cue, a series of sirens can be heard passing by the church. The liner notes of the CD suggest this occurred during the best take and couldn’t be edited out. I would argue that they were meant to be there all along. Thanks to SoundCloud, you can preview the whole CD.
We’re looking for your reflections on 9/11 and specifically on how we pass on the narrative of those events to future generations. Share your thoughts with us and we’ll incorporate them into our discussion.
It’s About the Music… Show
Alda Balthrop-Lewis, Production Intern
We’re working on finding the perfect subject for a show about music. Ideas as diverse as Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Sacred Harp singing, and the Sufi devotional music qawwali have been recently floating around the office.
Myself? I am always moved by string quartets. The video above is the fourth movement of the Cezch composer Dvorak’s String Quartet n. 12, commonly called American, inspired by a summer he spent in Spillville, Iowa. He said he never would have written this piece the way he did if he hadn’t seen America: its birds, trains, and long tradition of African-American spirituals.
Please let us know if you have thoughts about our music show. Which musician would you like to hear discuss the power song has to move our hearts?
