The Heart's Cry (De Profundis) (SATB)
“The text of Psalm 130, or at least the first half of it, has always resonated with me in it’s deep and human expression of desperation and hopelessness. It is, as I would call it, “The Heart’s Cry”, the most sincere and deepest exclamation from the depths of one’s being. As such, the music is dissonant to the extreme in an expression of raw human emotion. Indeed, there are several “cries” of anguish and desperation in the first movement.However, as I wrote the music, I could not reconcile the second half of the text regarding forgiveness and finding strength in the word of the Christian god with the first. It was, for me, a cheap resolution to the hopelessness of the first half of the text. At this point, I came across a poem by English author C.S. Lewis, known for his “The Chronicles of Narnia” and for being a huge proponent of Christianity. The poem, taking its title from the first two words of the Psalm 130 in Latin “De Profundis”, was written before his conversion to Anglicanism and as such retains a deeply Humanist tone that, while criticising the Christian god, hoped for a better, a more loving god that had genuine interest in human affairs.”