{"id":9139,"date":"2023-09-16T02:40:48","date_gmt":"2023-09-16T08:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=9139"},"modified":"2025-01-17T04:48:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T11:48:06","slug":"thank-god-youve-got-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/16\/thank-god-youve-got-a-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank God you’ve got a Job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The music label ECM is well known to fans of jazz, but also of avant-garde classical music. Recordings in the latter camp are by familiar composers like Arvo P\u00e4rt, John Adams, Steve Reich, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen\u2014and Meredith Monk, who Rob Berg and I (and friends) caught at the lovely John Anson Ford Theater last month as she celebrated her eightieth birth year in song, movement, and music with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from Monk’s music, which was profound yet playful, I must mention that we arrived early enough to witness a deep-teal-colored cloudless sky framed by the theater’s walls. I had to look away; I didn’t want its perfection to pass. I was reminded of the John McLaughlin title, “What Need Have I for This\u2014What Need Have I for That\u2014I Am Dancing at the Feet of My Lord\u2014All Is Bliss\u2014All Is Bliss.”<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officium<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Definitely not<\/em> dancing, but rather writhing, complaining\u2014confronting\u2014is Job, whose challenge to his Lord is neatly summed in the Christian devotional cycle, Officium Defunctorum<\/em> (Office of the Dead). Thirty years ago this month, ECM recorded Job’s Parce mihi domine<\/em>, from the Office, coupled with kindred motets, by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek and British quartet The Hilliard Ensemble, under the simple title of Officium<\/em>. This arranged marriage was contrived by ECM founder Manfred Eicher, inspired by composer Crist\u00f3bal Morales’s sixteenth-century setting of the Office, which Eicher (re)heard while filming his Holoz\u00e4n<\/em>, based on Max Frisch’s novel Man in the Holocene<\/em>. In the booklet that accompanies the ECM release, Frisch mentions “driving through the jagged lava fields of Iceland” during filming, of his protagonist’s “encroaching isolation,” the landscape “a metaphor for the silencing of mankind whose history has come to an end.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Silenced, Job is not. “Parce mihi domine”\u2014\u201cLet me alone [Lord]”\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7<\/span> 16b<\/strong><\/sup> Let me alone; for my days are vanity.17<\/strong><\/sup> What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? 18<\/strong><\/sup> And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?\n19<\/strong><\/sup> How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?\n20<\/strong><\/sup> I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?21<\/strong><\/sup> And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Job x Jung<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the introduction to his monograph on the subject, Answer to Job<\/em>, Carl Jung writes of the dialectic involving physical<\/em> and psychic<\/em> truths.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It’s akin to Kathleen Raine’s “Fact is not the truth of myth; myth is the truth of fact.”<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Take the notion of Mother Earth: psychically seductive but physically absurd. Our planet sustains life to be sure, but it has a molten core with a crusty, watery coat; genderless and capricious. Still, the “myth” of this orb, personified as Gaia, persists. And so in his Answer<\/em>, Jung develops a “coming to terms” (literally) with the religious realm via his “intellect” in tandem with his “feeling.” That’s how I come to Job’s words, as dramatically the days darken here in Denver. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parce mihi domine<\/em>, this contemplation of the creator’s relation with the creature\u2014and its departure\u2014appears not once but thrice in the course of Officium<\/em>: beginning, middle, end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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