DESCRIPTION:
Cathedral in the Trashing Rain, for countertenor, two tenors, and baritone soli (2000)

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James, countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump, tenor
Steven Harrold, tenor
Gordon James, baritone

The Hilliard Ensemble commissioned Hartke for an a cappella work for four voices, and Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain was the result. The original text is by Japanese poet Takamura Kotaru, who was deeply moved by a visit to Paris and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. (Hartke set the text in an English translation by Hiroaki Sato.) Hartke love for polyphony is literally what made it possible for him to write this work, yet his response to the text is notable for its originality and open-mindedness. Like the speaker in Cathedral, both works suggest that Hartke is someone who venerates the ancient without sentimentalizing or trivializing it. Hartke demands and receives great virtuosity from the performers. The inherent difficulties of Medieval polyphony are quadrupled, at least, by Hartke's writing. Recorded in the presence of the composer, these performances are definitive. The venue was Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the engineers have given the music both intimacy and air. [classical.net]

About the poet:

TAKAMURA Kōtarō (1883-1956) was both a sculptor and a poet. He stands as one of the first important modernist voices in Japanese poetry. Prior to World War I, he travelled quite extensively in the West, to the United States, England, France and Italy. Of all these places, France was the country that appealed to him most, as is so clearly evident from the beautiful poem heard in this setting. Cathedral in the thrashing rain (or Ame ni utataru katedoraru, in the original Japanese) was apparently written around 1921.

Art by Claude Monet