Despair Picture  Psalms of Despair for Soprano, Clarinet, and Piano - Programme Notes
              (1996; 12')

           Click to view or print score (please let me know if you perform this)

            Psalms of Despair was composed in the fall of 1996 as the result of a commission from the Atlantic Arts Trio through the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. I wanted to find a text that expressed the searing and visceral pain of abject despair, and after months of searching, discovered that portions of the biblical Psalms expressed these feelings better than anything I had come across. I found it fascinating that words written perhaps three thousand years ago could speak so directly and personally to someone living in our time. It suggests that there has been no evoloution whatsoever in our emotional and intellectual makeup as humans over that time; the ways in which we respond to life's challenges does not seem to have changed much in three thousand years.
            I took some liberties with the text, excerpting selected lines from three different Psalms that conveyed the bleakness I wished to express, ordering the lines as I wished, changing words on occasion, and even adding a couple of lines.

           ©Clark Winslow Ross



[ If the music doesn't begin playing automatically after a few seconds, click here ]
Live concert performance by The Atlantic Arts Trio (Carolyn Hart (sop), Paul Bendzsa (cl), Edmund Dawe (pno))



Psalms of Despair
Text Excerpted and Adapted from Psalms 22, 77, and 130
(Words and phrases in italics are free adaptations by the composer)

Psalm 22
Oh God, why have you forsaken me?
Where are you?   Do you not hear my cries?
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Oh my God,   I cry all day but you do not answer,
and at night, and at night I cry but I never find peace .

And yet you are enthroned in holiness, while I am abused and scorned by all.

Psalm 77
I cried out loud to God! Oh God!   Will You reject me for evermore?
(Oh God,) and will you never smile upon me for as long as I live?
I lay sweating and nothing would cool me; darkness came over my spirit.
I was dazed and blind, and could not speak.
I could not sleep; there was no peace, there was no peace within my soul,
I could not stop my darkest thoughts , my spirit was sunk in despair!

Psalm 22
And yet you are enthroned in holiness, while I am alone and call to thee.

Psalm 130
Oh Lord, out of the depths I call to thee,
Oh Lord, hear my cry.

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