Mijn schuilplaats - beurtzang naar psalm 11 = My Refuge - Antiphonal Song from Psalm 11, 1979 - 1981

Psalm 11 is a song of trust in God who is a refuge for all who seek protection, from whatever harm may prevail. It inspires confidence in One whose name should never be forgotten. The psalm itself sees the Temple as the place of shelter from every adversity. The text is most likely pre-Exilic, and there are illusions to 1 Samuel 18, thus assigning some degree of Davidic authority to at least part of the text. Flee like a bird to the mountains implies that the weakest of all, the lowly and persecuted, take refuge in God's holy mountain, an apparent reference to Psalms 24 and 121.

There are gender issues here in translation. Oosterhuis adheres to the biblical masculine text, Hij - He. I have translated this as Who, a common way in which he proclaims and addresses the Deity. Had I rendered this as You throughout, I would have destroyed the literary form of proclamation, and turning it instead into a personal form of address, which the psalm is not doing. This a a statement of confidence, that Israel's God, among all the other gods, alone is one to be trusted. Only at the final word, at the end of verse 4, have I rendered Onschuld zal Hem aanschouuwen - Those without blame shall see Him revealed as Those without blame shall see your face. Alleluia VIII was among the collection of Gregorian melodies that Huijbers wished to see preserved, lest they should ever be allowed to disappear from posterity. He believed that these, short, chant phrases were etched into race memory, and ran the risk of being displaced by the emerging vernacular songs in response to Vatican II. Modally, this piece is set in the traditional Psalm Tone VIII, one of the basic common tones, to emphasize the everyday trustworthiness of the God of Covenant. - Tony Barr