Kan het stof - beurtzang naar psalm 30 = Can The Dust - Antiphona Song from Psalm 30, 1979 - 1981

Oosterhuis selected Psalm 30 because it reflects on the theme of God's anger lasting but a moment. Whereas for us life itself lasts but a moment, God is unchanging and beyond time. This psalm is an individual song of thanksgiving, possibly dating to the rebuilding of the Temple after Israel's return from Exile (BC 538), and a celebration of liberation from captivity, and even death itself. It was sung as a communal song at the annual dedication of the Temple. It may have been adapted from an earlier thanksgiving sacrifice by those who had been delivered from death's door. Can the dust every praise you is an allusion to the dust of the earth, which shall one day pass, the temporary yet endure nature of our earthly existence, the flesh, bone and blood which were all formed at the dawn of time in the Big Bang, which seeded the Galaxy with every known mineral. In singing this psalm, we are celebrating that even in the midst of death, we are finding life in all of its fullness.

Huijbers explained how he had studied every example of this chant to determine how composers from the past had resolved difficulties between the melos (musical shape) and irregularity of the texts, with their varied syllabic accents. He chose this common chant, to preserve its melody from disappearing in the wake of the new vernacular song tradition. The commonality of the text applies to very day life, may and the chant Alleluia, set here in Gregorian Psalm tone mode IV, is a breathless ending of Psalm 150 to mean let every breath of my being be a song of praise. He also provided a basic, non-melismatic, plain-chant setting of this text to Psalm Tone IV itself. -- Tony Barr