Nick Davies: Membra Nostri for solo violin (2022) скачать в хорошем качестве

Nick Davies: Membra Nostri for solo violin (2022)

Membra Nostri (2022) Meditation after Buxtehude Emelyn Bashour, violin Produced by Owen Zhou Recorded at First Congregational Church of Boulder This piece is a very personal essay about my experience of music, which is often a somatic one tied to an inmost spirituality and form of ecstatic realness. The title of the work, simply Latin for “our limbs,” is a derivation from Buxtehude’s seven-part cantata cycle Membra Jesu Nostri, in which each of the cantatas reflects on a physical aspect of Jesus on the cross, each one furthermore serving as an allegory for a devotion to Christ. Although raised without religion, I have always found myself drawn to liturgical works of the baroque by German masters like Dietrich Buxtehude and J.S. Bach. The conviction and sincerity of such works are so powerful, that even as a non-believer it is as if the onset of a piece casts a spell upon the listener, only broken at its conclusion. This headiness is reflected too in baroque approaches to text setting, as heard in works such as Bach’s dialogue cantatas which depict the intertwining of the soul with the love of Christ in near erotic tones. The text from Buxtehude’s Ad genua (“To the knees”) cantata here depicts a loving scene of Christ dandled upon the lap of Mother Jerusalem, but broadly symbolizes the comfort offered to those who accept Christ’s love even in deepest suffering. The musical materials are derived from motives from the opening sonata of Ad genua and ensuing choral concerto “Ad ubera portabimini, et super genua blandientur vobis” (“You shall be carried to the breasts and dandled on the knees”). What in the Buxtehude are originally a harmonic structure and blossoming vocal counterpoint become instead the grounds for an ecstatic meditation, the finding of beauty even in greatest suffering. The effect is of a stretching out of the original materials as they are expanded manifold in a fashion reminiscent of Indian raga and instruments from Chinese classical music. My special thanks to the ineffable Emelyn Bashour for bringing this piece to life, and for premiering this work in such a compelling and consummate fashion!