Job for Organ: IV. Longing for Death – Petr Eben скачать в хорошем качестве

Job for Organ: IV. Longing for Death – Petr Eben

"Why died I not, from the womb? Wherefore is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?" Job 3:11, 23 The Czech organist Petr Eben survived a concentration camp during the Holocaust and incorporated this experience into musical compositions throughout his life. In 1987, he published a suite called Job for Organ that depicts the suffering and endurance of Job in eight movements, each accompanied by a related Bible passage. Like Franck’s Choral in B Minor, the fourth movement of Eben’s suite is a passacaglia, although the form breaks down gradually throughout.In the Baroque era, a four-measure bass line in triple meter, stepwise and spanning a fourth, often symbolized lament or grief. Longing for Death features a similar theme with a descending chromatic melody for eight measures. The variations on this theme build in rhythmic energy. As a person in distress will pray in the same way over and over when all other words are exhausted, this piece’s structure recreates Job's repeated prayer for God to end his suffering. The melodic theme travels from the top of the keyboard to each end of the pedals. In the program notes for the original recording of this piece, Eben provides a summary of this movement where he writes that “the ever increasing misfortunes overtaking Job are here reflected in a passacaglia, the overwhelming climax of which dissolves in a final pianissimo variation in which Job is crushed to the ground.”