Show 118: Death, Suffering, Mourning and Grief

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 18.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show118.  For instance, the July 4^th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]

There have recently been several deaths in our family, most recently a daughter, Pam, who was just about 23.  So this week's program is about representing death, sorrow and grief in music.  Pam was all about music, and it seems appropriate that we do this program in remembrance of her.

Part A

Introduction
Composers have often written music on the occasion of the death of various people, and some of this music is very beautiful, even if it is somber.
The background music is J. S. Bach: Organ fugue in A minor BWV 543 b.  It has been arranged for percussion instruments and plucked strings (marimbas, guitars, etc) and a rhythm track added.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Komm', Suesser Tod, Bwv 478
Bach harmonized a chorale called Come sweet death, which is just one of many pieces he wrote which are meditations on death, intended to be sung at the beside of a dying person.  This is a recording of an arrangement of it by Leopold Stokowsky.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Mache dich mein Herze rein
In Bach’s famous Passion according to St Matthew, there is a lovely Bass aria which suits the mood of this program: Mache dich mein Herze rein:  O Make thou my heart pure.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Wir setzen uns
The last chorus of the Matthäuspassion is a very unusual piece for Bach: it is a completely homophonic chorus, where the choir says: We’re sitting down here, in tears, calling to you in your tomb; rest softly!  Rest your weary limbs...
It is very uncharacteristic, because of the almost complete absence of counterpoint.  It is as though the choir is too weary to sing anything complicated, and simply wails its misery.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Lacrimosa
In Mozart’s Requiem, there is a simple piece called the Lachrymosa, which is a verse from the Latin requiem mass, which has a beautiful rising scale.  It is about weeping.

John Winston Lennon: Imagine
This may seem to be inappropriate to include in this list of music that has religious or spiritual overtones.  But no one can say that Lennon had no spiritual feelings; the words are full of meaning that is spiritual to those who are agnostics or atheists.

Part B

Samuel Barber: Adagio For Strings
When John Kennedy was assassinated, the world was shocked and grief-stricken.  It was this next piece: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings that was played at his funeral.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Nun komm' der Heiden Heiland
This organ chorale-prelude by Bach has a plaintive melody that seems to cry for comfort.  It is based on a hymn-tune, in which the words say, basically, O come thou savior of the gentiles.

Richard Strauss: Im Abendrot
Richard Strauss, the composer whose opening fanfare from Also sprach Zarathustra was used as the Monolith Theme in the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey, wrote a set of four beautiful arias, called Four Last Songs.  This is one from that set, called Im Abentrot: At Sunset. 

Maurice Ravel: Menuet from Le Tombeau de Couperin
Maurice Ravel evidently admired the French composer Francois Couperin, whose music is not widely performed today.  Ravel wrote an homage to Couperin consisting of a Suite, written first for piano, and later orchestrated.  This is the Minuet from that Suite, performed by Paul McCandless for Wyndham Hill records.

Part C

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem, Introit and Kyrie
This is Mozart's Requiem, the first two movements, intended to be performed one after the other.  As you might know, only part of the work was composed by Mozart; the rest was completed by a student called Francis Süssmayer.
The opening movement of the Requiem is an amazing work in itself.  The strings seem to actually sob.  The lower wind instrument is a sort of alto clarinet that was popular in Mozart’s time, called a Basset Horn.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Wie starb die Heldin, from Cantata 198

There was a noble lady Christiane Eberhardine, the wife of a certain prince of an area in Saxony (and later King Augustus of Poland), who was held in high regard for how well she treated her subjects.  When she died, Bach wrote a funeral ode in her honor, one his cantatas, number 198, and it was performed, we suppose, at her interment.  In those times, there was a characteristic funeral march that was played in honor of a deceased person, and several movements in this Cantata are written in this stately rhythm.  (To this day, I'm told that funeral marches in Louisiana are played this way.)  It is a somber piece, but not necessarily sad.  Grave, and dignified.

John Lennon: Mother

Julia Lennon

John Lennon was brought up apart from his mother; evidently the older generation that brought him up considered her unsuitable company for her own son.  Lennon's father was often away from home, and John missed both parents very much. 
When she died, John Lennon was devastated, and some years later, when he was receiving what was called at that time Primal Scream Therapy, or gestalt therapy, he decided to write this song, to express his grief and frustration at never having known his mother well enough.  (He had been told all along that she was his aunt, and only learned that she was his mother long afterwards.)

John Dowland: Sir Henry Umpton's Funerall
John Dowland wrote many really sad pieces.  This one was intended specifically to be played at the funeral of a young diplomat, Sir Henry Umpton, and is actually called Sir Henry Umpton’s Funerall. 
I first got to know and like these pieces by John Dowland by taking home some of the John V. Brown library’s vinyl collection in the eighties.  I don’t know where the LPs are now, but they have an excellent collection of classical music.  The more you borrow from the Brown Library, the better the case they can make for funding, so bear that in mind, and use the Brown Library as much as you can.

Part D

Maurice Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte
This is a well-known short piece by Ravel, called Pavane pour un enfant defuncte, which means: a Pavane for a little dead princess.  You may have heard the piece in its original instrumentation; this is played by a mandolin consort, again for Wyndham Hill records, but the harmonies are very faithful to the original Ravel.
[Added later: I just read that the Pavane was not to commemorate a princess who had just died, but intended to evoke a pavane that a little princess of the distant past may have danced.  Major misunderstanding.  In both cases, of course, the princess is not any longer alive.  But it was evidently not intended to be an expression of grief.]

James Leith Macbeth Bain: The Lord's my shepherd (Brother James's Air)
A Scottish preacher James Leith Macbeth Bain is credited with this lovely melody.  We sang Psalm 23 to this tune at our mother's memorial celebration.  I first heard it when I was about ten, when she was putting together another memorial service for the lady who had given her her first appointment as a teacher.  There are two versions here; the first is from Amazon, the second is the version we put together the week of the memorial, because we could not lay our hands on the sheet music.  (The sheet music we created is found here; feel free to use it.)

Johann Sebastian Bach: Aria Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen
This aria is taken from the Cantata entitled Ich have genug (BWV 82), which means It is enough.  The context is the Song of Simeon, who is said to have seen Jesus at the Feast of the Circumcision, and declared that he had lived long enough to see the Messiah, and was ready to die.  This aria, taken from the middle of the Cantata, has words which say: slumber on, you weary eyelids.
The aria (abbreviated for this broadcast) is sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberman, who died a few years ago of Muscular Dystrophy.

Johannes Brahms: Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, from Ein Deutsches Requiem
This movement has words of comfort from the Bible, in which God says that he will comfort you as a mother comforts her children.  But the words are given to a soprano soloist, in contrast to a bass or tenor, which is kind of eerie.  Still it is beautiful.

Archie: Tune
This is the tune with which we usually end the program.  It is possibly by Haydn, but more likely by someone else, attributed to Haydn.

Archie