Program Info

The title comes from David's lament for his son Absalom, a verse composers have set for centuries after the death of a child or prince. That grief sits at the heart of this program, framed by music of devotion on either side. The program opens with The Divine: Górecki's Totus Tuus, written for Pope John Paul II's 1987 visit to Poland, alongside Pärt's The Woman with the Alabaster Box and I Am the True Vine, two examples of Pärt's quintessential tintinnabuli style. Górecki's Amen closes the set.

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Shock & Solace turns toward grief and its aftermath. MacMillan's A Child's Prayer, written in memory of the children killed at Dunblane in 1996, sets a prayer the composer remembered from his own childhood. At its center, two settings of the same text 400 years apart: Weelkes's When David Heard, composed in the English tradition of mourning a fallen prince, and Eric Whitacre's — written for a friend whose teenage son had just died, and the composer's most personal work. Vaughan Williams's Rest, a setting of Christina Rossetti, closes the program.