Miroir de Peine - Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981)
1) The Agony in the Garden
2) The Scourging at the Pillar
3) The Crowning with Thorns
4) The Carrying of the Cross
5) The Crucifixion
Text from Miroir de Jésus: Quinze Petits Poèmes - Henri Ghéon (1875-1944)
Louise Wayman, soprano
Benjamin Saunders, organ
1) The Agony in the Garden
Is it only Jesus who is awake
in the prison of an endless night?
Is his the only feelings of abandonment?
His the only ear desperate to hear the sounds of morning?
In her house, with the open window
onto the hillside that was once so green
to contemplate in happier times,
The Mother also suffers the agony
of the absent Son whom his Father forgets,
and she must keep her tears to herself.
2) The Scourging at the Pillar
“When I was afraid you might be hurt by a bee,
by a fragment of cloth or even less,
when fluttering on your apricot-like cheeks,
the golden bloom of youth.
If someone had told me that soon mankind, meddling with so much beauty,
would tear up, before its summer ripening,
the perfect fruit promised for the autumn,
I would have kept hidden deep inside myself
the goodness of God which is all my good,
and taken upon myself his torture.
What justice is there when my pain
of the flying lead that beats your heart,
knows only the sound, but not the wound?”
3) The Crowning with Thorns
“Mothers, my sisters, tell me what wish
would a mother not make for her new-born, rocking him to sleep with a song on her lips,
the Mother happy in her poverty?
If I have sinned against wisdom
in crowning your brow with flowers,
why, my Son, should so much tenderness
have earned you so much shame?
O powerless Prince, where are your victories?
A circle of thorns grasps your head;
A dry reed trembles between your fingers ...
I want, at least, under this sad reign,
to subdue my dream of the one who bleeds and, of my misery, make you King …”
4) The Carrying of the Cross
“I want to see him but not to be seen by him;
One cross is already too much for him!
Here in this crowd, like a lost soul,
if I should faint, ah, then sustain me!
Only a woman amongst other women:
He dies not for me, but for everyone.
Forget me, my Son, and my tears
will flow all the better over them and you.
Let another woman then wipe your face;
Another then to kiss the trace
of the bleeding feet; another will take
the weight of the wood from his shoulder…
and as for me, the Mother, my role
is to fall when he passes by”.
5) The Crucifixion
“With my poor lament of a mother,
before whom do I now stand, my Belovèd?
A God who dies… yes! The great mystery!
I see a Son, who will leave me.
Let no beam from on high soften
a pain that I want all for myself:
Of my pain I sacrifice
to the divinity of my God.
He sees my tears and he pardons them.
I will accept the child that he gives me
to console in our home…
But this is too little to fill the empty place:
Into my arms that no longer hold him,
all his children, all mankind will come”.
Andriessen belonged to the Catholic tradition in Holland, and his music exhibits very clearly the debt that many Dutch Catholic composers owed to nineteenth and early twentieth-century French music, particularly those composer-organists of the time, such as Bruckner and Franck. He was a master of orchestration and his legacy is not just as a composer of organ works, but of eight mases, a setting of the Te Deum, four symphonies, two substantial operas, variations for orchestra, songs for voice and orchestra, music for wind orchestra, chamber music, sonatas for cello and piano, and a whole host of works for every genre.
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