classical

Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

This is a "live" recording of Evensong sung by Truro Cathedral Choir on Sunday 1st July. The organ is played by Luke Bond, the cantor in the responses is Nicholas Hawker and the Choir is directed by Christopher Gray. 

The anthem is Identity by James MacMillan. The words are reproduced below and the following is a brief explanation of this very moving piece.

Up to 30,000 people were tortured and killed under the military dictatorship in Argentina, between 1976 and 1983. 

These 30,000 people are known as “The Disappeared” as they often simply vanished without a trace. An organization called “The Mothers of the Plazo de Mayo” or sometimes “The Mothers of the Disappeared” was set up by mothers who wanted to be re-united with their missing children. 

The words of "Identity" are by the Argentinian poet Ariel Dorfman and they refer to this dark chapter in Argentina’s history. 

The poem takes the form of a telephone conversation, of which we only hear one side. We can perhaps imagine one of the “Mothers of the Disappeared” being woken by the telephone, in the middle of the night, to be told that another body has turned up.

The music is composed by James MacMillan who, as a committed Catholic, has chosen to add some words from the Requiem Mass asking God to save the faithful departed from the pains of hell. 


What did you say—they found another one?
—I can’t hear you—this morning
another one floating
in the river?
talk louder—so you didn’t even dare
no one can identify him?
the police said not even his mother
    not even the mother who bore him 
    not even she could 
they said that?
the other women already tried—I can’t understand what you’re saying,
they turned him over and looked at his face, his hands they looked at,
    right, 
they’re all waiting together,
silent, in mourning, 
on the riverbank, 
they took him out of the water
he’s naked 
    as the day he was born, 
there’s a police captain
and they won’t leave until I get there?
He doesn’t belong to anybody,
you say he doesn’t belong to anybody?
    tell them I’m getting dressed,
        I’m leaving now
    if the captain’s the same one as 
        last time
    he knows 
        what will happen
        that body will have my name -
        my son’s my husband’s
            my father’s
        name
I’ll sign the papers tell them
    tell them I’m on my way,
        wait for me 
and don’t let that captain touch him
don’t let that captain take one step closer 
    to him.
Tell them not to worry:
I can bury my own dead.

Libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum 
de poenis inferni, et de profundo lacu: Libera 
eas de ore leonis ne absorbeat eas tartarus, 
ne cadant in obscuram.
 
Deliver the souls of all the faithful departed 
from the pains of hell, and from the depths of the pit: 
deliver them from the lion’s mouth that hell devour them not, 
that they fall not into darkness.


TOcatta in d minor...........remix.........JB

Jay & Bea

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