Wees hier aanwezig (Herder van Israel) = Shepherd of Israel, 1967 - 1988

In composing this poece, Huijbers identified the various literary forms of the Oosterhuis poem, and assigned appropriate musical forms to each of these, resulting in a composite setting of varied musical forms. He isolated proclamation and accalmation, entreaty, recitative and ballad, lamentation and resolution True to the principles advocated by Gelineau, he expressed the drama in the patten Ancient Greek theater, of a trilogue setting between the protagonist, the chorus and the audience, in this case the psalmist, the assembly and the choir. The psalm opens with the psalmist intoning the refrain, which becomes the assembly's song throughout. This is a constant prayer of entreaty for the return of a compassionate God to the people who had been abandoned. This refrain uses formula technique, the same melodic and rhythmic pattern with and evolving text throughout. Following the principles of elementray music of Carl Orff, he observes step-technique of descending intervals, in place of the ascending phrase usually associated with entreaty. Unlike Gelineau, Huijbers' style is not to lock musical phrases into pulsed measures but to allow the text to determine its own rhythmoc pulse as determined by its syllabic structure. The tension between the unwavering pulse of the music and the free flow of the accents of the texts reult in a creative tension which becomkes the lifeblood of the psalm. Interspersed between the refrains, the choir emerges as the third voice in the cast. They take responsiboloty for the verses, through recitative, aria, and inter-sectional dialogue. This is scored for pulsed and free-flow chant. There are steady instructions throughout as to dynamics and style of performance, and an unvarying time signature of 56 applies to both q and q. Oosterhuis' text is from the 1967 collection 50 Psalms - towards a new translation, the fruit of two exegetes (Pius Drijvers and Han Renckens, Oosterhuis' one-time professor of Scripture) and two poets (himself and Michel van der Plas). This was the first vernacular Dutch psalter to appear after Vatican II, inspired by the work of Gelineau in the 1950s of translating the entire psalter into the vernacular for use within liturgy. In 2011, Oosterhuis publosed his entire collection of 150 Psalms - Free, based on that original collection but no longer tied to the formal language of the Psalter, the furit of over 50 years of reflection and interpretation. - Tony Barr