Music Tuesday: Prayer of St. Gregory

I haven’t had a Music Tuesday post in a while.  I came across this piece on my local classical music station (WQXR, you can get it on the internet) while driving.  I had never heard of it, nor of the composer, Alan Hovhanass. 

Alan Hovhanass (1911-2000) was an American composer of partial Arminian ethnicity, and he would eventually embrace that ethnicity and compose from that cultural perspective, at least at first.  He would later expand into other world musical perspectives.  His music embraces many international forms and styles.  I probably should be embarrassed I had never heard of him.  He was immensely prolific—67 symphonies!—with over 500 known compositions.  And he destroyed over a thousand pages of youthful compositions which he didn’t consider worthy.  He wrote his first composition at the age of four!

Prayer of St. Gregory is a trumpet piece with accompanying strings.  There is an alternate arrangement with an organ replacing the strings.  I’ll embed both and we can decide which we prefer.

The Prayer of St. Gregory piece is part of Hovhannas’s opera, Etchmiadzin.  Etchmiadzin is an alternate name to the Armenian city of Vagharshapat where the holy Etchmiadzin Cathedral resides.  It is not clear to me whether the opera refers to the city or the cathedral.  The Cathedral dates back to the fourth century.  Construction is supposed to have begun back in 303 AD, and attributed to St. Gregory the Illuminator, the founder of Armenia’s Apostolic Church, which is currently not in communion with the Catholic Church.   As an aside, I should add that there is currently an Armenian Catholic Church which is in full communion with the Bishop of Rome and is one of the 23 Eastern Rite Catholic Churches.

 

The Armenian Apostolic Church was in 301 the first official Christian religion of a national state in history.  The Catholic Church was still being persecuted under pagan Imperial Rome and would not reach toleration under the Emperor Constantine until 313 but not made the state religion of the empire until 380 by the Emperor Theodosius I.  Armenia had last been part of the Roman Empire in 117 under the Emperor Trajan but Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, decided to not defend it in 118.  Parts of Armenia in subsequent years would both be incorporated and then fall away from both the Roman and Parthian Empires which were in struggle against each other.  But Christianity took root in Armenia in as early as the year 40, supposedly under the apostles Jude and Bartolomew. 

 

Gregory the Illuminator, however, is credited with evangelizing the country in the late third and early fourth centuries.  Prior to the conversion of the country, Gregory is to have spent fourteen years in jail for refusing to sacrifice to a pagan goddess, a jail cell which sounds like it was not much different than a well.  He would eventually be released and then convert the king, and the country followed.  I am guessing that the Prayer of St. Gregory is alluding to the prayer Gregory must have made while in the desolation of the jail pit.  The trumpet solo voice represents the prayer of desolation, sadness, and appeal of the saint toward providence.  The strings (or alternative organ) establishes the context and ambiance of Gregory’s predicament and perhaps represents the voice of God.  On that you will have to judge for yourself.  Let’s listen first, and then I’ll try to describe what my amateur ears hear.  Of the various orchestra versions on the internet, I prefer this orchestra version with David Krauss on trumpet and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (The Met) accompanying. 

 

 

There are three trumpet entries into the piece.  I think that is the key characteristic in conceptualizing the score’s structure.  The strings—the first voice—initiates the piece and sets the context of what feels like prison walls.  At about thirty seconds the trumpet makes its first entry and plays what I’ll call the desolation melody.  The phrasing seems to emulate a vocal prayer.  The first trumpet entry lasts for about 40 seconds.  That diminishing phrase that concludes the trumpet melody seems to be the defining fragment of the melody and expresses the emotional core.

Then the strings have a short moment of prominence picking up what I think is part of the desolation melody.  In just 20 seconds, the trumpet enters for the second time, again with the desolation melody but this time the prayer developing to a greater appeal.  It reaches a higher pitch of notes with more dynamism and longer note duration.  The energy momentarily surges but then retreats to the melancholy phrasing of the first entry. 

Then the trumpet goes silent for almost two full minutes, almost 40% of the piece.  In this stretch, the strings develop its melody, what seems to me a response to the desolation melody.  This second melody seems to pick elements of the trumpet phrasing but its ebbing and flowing feels like this is a voice of comfort, or trying to comfort, perhaps even a voice of explanation.  Is the trumpet comforted?  I feel a tension in the extended silence, and when it comes in for its third entry the melody has not changed and its appeal seems even greater.  It returns to the dynamism of the second entry only with even higher pitched notes.  But after its burst of energy the trumpet returns to its desolation phrasing, but, it should be noted, the piece concludes with the strings and trumpet ending on an extended harmonic note together.  While desolation melody has remained prominent, the piece does seem to conclude in intimacy.

But these are all my reactions.  You could make the argument that it ends in an unanswered appeal.  That is for you to decide.

Now let’s hear the version with organ as accompanying voice.  Wynton Marsalis is on trumpet and Anthony Newman on organ.  This alternate version is a shade shorter, the forty seconds taken from the trumpet’s silent section.

 

Marsalis is magnificent on trumpet but I have to admit, the organ seems to be lacking in the response.  It’s just not a fuller voice than the strings, and it doesn’t feel equal to the trumpet voice.  I definitely prefer the version with the strings.  How about you?