Arise! Music of the Psalms - Music CD

Director: Robin Freeman Johann Baptist Metz described biblical Israel as a “landscape of cries, a landscape of memory of expectation,” in contrast to the brilliant, flourishing cultures of the ancient world—Egypt, Persia, Greece. Those diverse cries are most clearly heard in the book of Psalms, a book which recapitulates the entire scriptural story; St Athanasius describes the Psalter as a garden which grows the fruit of every other book of the Bible. Music for Christian worship has thus always centered on the Psalms: the text articulates those cries, while the music situates us as hearers, forcing us into the role of “the coming generation” (Ps 78:4), fusing ancient words and modern melodies. The Psalms offer cries of despair, like in Mandell’s desolate Psalm of Deliverance, and in his Lamentations arrangement. A Byzantine arrangement of Psalm 136/137, By the Waters of Babylon, highlights our singing in a strange land. The Psalms offer cries of longing: for God’s peace, as in Budinich