LIBRETTO
MAGNIFICAT BY MICHAEL KURTH, 2016
Libretto Excerpt by Jesse Breite
And now, my breath breaks on the name of God,
to seek, find, redefine the broken time.
I delight the loam, the long, cold-cracked road,
where I am ever-born and tendril-sweet.
Recall my life, old ringed world,
my blood-red Lord bright in these limbs
and flourishing still.
Libretto Excerpt by Jesse Breite
Movement V., starting at 15:35
I stood alien at the crossroad,
unjarred my mouth,
held forth my hand, but none knew my name.
How I grew weak, touch-broke and needful
under the hurt-tree.
My eyes raked the pavement for scraps
and swallowed.
My bones unbuckled and leaked.
My heart bled vinegar.
None read the sacred verse of my skin.
None unsaddled my sorrowful limbs.
MISERERE BY MICHAEL KURTH, 2018
Libretto by Jesse Breite
V.
You must first look past
the little corpses, the useless limbs,
the clown-faced fools
who wear your name, the calcified
pressures of shame.
You must stage the terrible romance
over your eyes, cut out
the tongues of the poor,
unsee widows, orphans
dropping coin into kettles.
Stuff the shorn heads with silver—
silver tongues, silver eyes,
silver-sweet hellos and goodbyes.
Reach your hand in, brush against God-flesh.
Tear the freshly broken bread.
How can you account
the cost, looking back before you scry?
How can you doubt
your own satisfactions when the sun
drops like a circular
saw into the earth’s tired face—
its keen blades searing the great rolling eye?
VII.
Gimme the broke skin,
metal thorned wrist and foot,
blood volcanic wound-core—
its purple tongue-swell,
the hurt curtains draping
the face with sweat and gore
Gimme the flesh filleted by cheers,
the wood turnt on the horizon,
the cut wet stuck to these fingers,
the ooze of adoration lost,
the shame-murmuring shadows,
the heartless fist of angels,
body wretched of all feeling
Gimme the sinister air,
the voice emptied of its
gravelly depths, the buzzed-
grass burnt hill,
the prickled skull spotted red
and achey with lack
MISERERE, TRACKS 9 - 16
Movements V. and VII.
ATLANTA COMPOSER MICHAEL KURTH
ATLANTA SYMPHONY'S NEWEST ALBUM FEATURES 'SACRED, SPOOKY' MUSIC
GPB's Sarah Zaslaw speaks with Michael Kurth