The Lamentations of Jeremiah

The World as it has been bequeathed to us presents itself in the shape of ruins in every domain: ecological, ethical and aesthetic. The historical antecedent of this state of affairs was the destruction of Jerusalem which was the origin of the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah. These lamentations are not only an expression of despair. They are also a prayer, in other words, a constructive expression of the consciousness of our error, of our betrayal of the superior reality, which led to the destruction of the historical Jerusalem, and of the world in which we live.

For us, therefore, our only constructive act is the ritual repetition of the prophet's lamentation, because it is only after having bewailed our own betrayal that we will be able to regain the hope of reconstructing the world we have destroyed. The sense of the Lamentations of Jeremiah lies less in their informative contents than in the recreation of the grieving state of mind. The words surpass their primary informative function and are transformed into a vigorous torrent of sobs before a desecrated world.

The twenty two verses of each chapter of the Lamentations correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The alphabet constitutes a diagram of the universe and the letters sung at the beginning of each verse symbolize enumeration of the various things and phenomena that exist in the world. At the same time these twenty two verses are broken up into melodic groups consisting of three repetitions of groups of seven plus one, or of seven repetitions of groups of three plus one. In Christian numerical symbolism the number 7 corresponds to the perfection of our world, 3 is the Trinity and 1 the only God. In addition, 7+1 make 8, the number that Orthodox tradition regards as that of the Resurrection and of eternal life. Thus the numerical structure rigorously govern the melodic structures, which creates a unity of the letter, the spirit and the sound. As the fundamental melodic material elements from the Byzantine Ochtoechos, Gregorian chant, and ancient Russian and Balkan chants have been employed. These various Christian traditions united within the composition signify Jerusalem destroyed and rebuilt in its eternal completeness.

  The idea of writing a paraliturgical work on one of the great Scriptural texts came to me in 1990-91, after the success of my Apocalypse in Germany. It was during these years, too, that the Sirin Ensemble under the direction of Andrey Kotov began to assert himself. Its members had developed a style of interpretation consisting of fusion of early religious chant and folk-song.The entire work was premiered in 1993 during the December Evenings festival in Moscow. It was on this occasion that the Lamentations attracted the attention of Anatoly Vassiliev, one of the most gifted stage directors of our time. From that moment the members of the Sirin Ensemble became actors, or adepts of the Vassiliev's  School of Dramatic Arts where for a year they were initiated into the secrets of the actor's profession  in the course of exhausting training sessions. It was only after a year of ascetic discipline that they were permitted to join singing to movement, because the problem posed by Vassiliev was totally new, consisting of transforming psychological theatre into ritual theatre.

Vladimir Martynov