The Prayer Cycle

The Prayer Cycle

The Prayer Cycle
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CD Details

Composer: Jonathan Elias
Conductor: Lawrence Schwartz
Orchestra: English Chamber Orchestra
Performer: Devin Provenzano
Performer: James Taylor
Performer: Richard Bona
Performer: Ofra Haza
Performer: Linda Ronstadt
Performer: Alanis Morissette
Performer: Salif Keita
Performer: Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
Performer: Mah Damba
Performer: Yungchen Lhamo
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1999-03-23
Music Label: Sony
Product features:
  • VARIOS INTERPRETES THE PRAYER CYCLE
Soundtracks:
  1. Movement 1: Mercy
  2. Movement 2: Strength
  3. Movement 3: Hope
  4. Movement 4: Compassion
  5. Movement 5: Grace
  6. Movement 6: Innocence
  7. Movement 7: Forgiveness
  8. Movement 8: Benediction
  9. Movement 9: Faith

Music reviews of The Prayer Cycle

Music Review: The Prayer Cycle
Rating: 4 Stars

In J. S. Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, there is a beautiful passage: "In the evening when it was cool." This line recounts the biblical events that happened in the cool of the evening, when God walked with Adam and Eve in His Garden. The arrangement is performed in Vespers. Vespers celebrates the lighting of the lamps as evening descends and is a counterpart to Lauds, in which there is a celebration of the coming of natural light.

But unlike Lauds, Vespers are intended to be perfect -- although unskilled performers sing them -- so that their serenity creates an interior monastery. "Grace," in particular, is not perfect; it is a fierce, grinding drama. It begins with little more than a three-note ascending figure, echoed among the winds and snuffed out by a gruff descending scale-figure. Just as suddenly, however, Vespers poke its head into the proceedings, a kind of "hurry up" reminder that there are sterner matters to be dealt with. It is here I think of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion: "In the evening when it was cool"; or, "Father won't you carry me, Father won't you carry me, Father won't you carry me" -- an imperfect voice, as precipitous as the music roars, suddenly backs away, sound and motion throttle down to a minimum. Plucked strings begin to pick out the bare outline of a theme, and the winds lend tiny points of color to a fluttering of a flute. It ends, effortlessly, like it began.

"Father won't you carry me home": It is folk art; it is out of place, imperfect. Thus, its imperfection is part of its perfection; it accommodates all kinds of voices and vocal skills. Imperfections are therefore inevitable, as they are in life. But this is the point precisely; a remarkably transcendent beauty is generated when ordinary people, with their shortcomings, give themselves to an adagio of prayers rehabilitated not as heretical aberrations, but as valid views from a later age. Thus, at every moment when a self-respecting composer should be celebrating the sanctity of classical traditions, Elias has upset "normal" expectations and has gone wondering -- and from his perambulations, he has drawn distilled beauty, something truly remarkable.

B. L. Nelson

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Description of The Prayer Cycle

VARIOS INTERPRETES THE PRAYER CYCLE
It is with primitive urgency and lustrous clarity rising like flickering embers from a fire that Jonathan Elias's ambitious Prayer Cycle is given voice. Woven together like knotty wool, silk, and fine strands of silvery water, the disparate yet complementary voices of the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Alanis Morissette, Yungchen Lhamo, Ofra Haza, the American Boychoir, Salif Keita, and others intertwine in multiple languages with the superb English Chamber Orchestra and Chorus. Prayers of supplication, gratitude, and longing build in layers, one on top of and 'twixt and 'tween the other, as movements titled "Mercy," "Grace," "Innocence," "Compassion," and the like. Remarkably, Elias's Prayer Cycle eloquently captures the ecstasy, pain, grief, and sublime beauty of humanity--as he simply and poignantly writes in his liner notes, "The world we live in is both joyous and cruel." --Paige La Grone

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