Een mens, geboren uit een vrouw - Beurtzang voor een dode II = Everyone Born Of Woman - Antiphonal Song for a Dead Person II (Job 14:1-6), 1979 - 1981

Oosterhuis turned for his text to the Book of Job, which is a series of discourses about the meaning or futility of life. All happiness and beauty is but fleeting, and the troubled soul has problems in accepting an ever-loving and merciful God, in the face of personal crises and unresolved issues. Job had lost everything to storm ravage and destruction, to pillage and plague, ultimately every security which life had to offer. Yet, in true Wisdom tradition, he never lost sight of the One Who is life and promise, and therefore the Source of all hope and trust. In hardship and loss, he learned the true values in the flow and ebb of events as overseen by the Giver of Life and Breath.

The English translation is true to the Dutch, but nevertheless lacks the explosive yet soft sounds of the original. The melismatic phrasing is true to the Dutch, and one hopes for the purity of the vowel sounds and sustained breathing to communicate the deep sense of empathy engendered by the text. Huijbers had little difficulty in turning to Libera Me as the perfect melody to accompany this text from Job. That gloomy man of deep faith, despite tragic losses, never lost hope. It is the song of Absolution from the Funeral Liturgy, a cry for deliverance from the calamitous forces raging against every departing soul. All so often this text is set by classical choral composers such as Verdi, Berlioz and Britten, to explosive brass and foreboding percussion. Huijbers chose these melodic fragments and their associations to contrast the apocalyptical forces of nature with the fragility of human existence and the pathos of a life of struggle but characterized by measurable achievements, deserving of the favorable glance of the ever-compassionate One. -- Tony Barr