Fragments from "De Profundis" (2021)
Six movements; tenor soloist, SATB choir, string orchestra; 16 min. ca.
The composer writes: In 1895 the celebrated author Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency. The fashionable London dandy spent the next two years in four of Her Majesty’s prisons: Newgate, Pentonville, Wandsworth and finally Reading Goal. In these prisons, he was subjected to a deliberately cruel daily regime of hard labour, harsh penalties and near-total isolation. To make matters even worse, during these two years Wilde’s mother died, his wife left him (changing her name), and he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Productions of his plays came to a halt. He was, in modern parlance, “cancelled.”
For Wilde, incarceration was a radically life-changing experience. It had a dangerously harmful impact on his physical health, from which he never fully recovered. (He died just four years after his release.) Also, his time in prison led him to thoroughly re-examine his life and values. In 1897, he documented his thoughts in a lengthy, 80-page letter – an “epistle,” if you will – ostensibly addressed to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, but probably also intended for eventual public consumption.
The publication of Wilde’s letter has a complicated history. Excerpts first appeared in print in 1905, given the title “De Profundis” by Wilde’s literary executor, Robert Ross. This Latin phrase, which means “out of the depths” in English, is a reference to the opening of Psalm 130: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.” Expanded editions of Wilde’s “De Profundis” were published in 1908 and 1949. It was not until 1962 that a complete and accurate version of the text appeared in print.
And what are we, in the 21st century, to make of “De Profundis”? Is it a tragic example of “victim self-blaming”? Or a sanctimonious mea culpa, designed to restore its author’s social standing? There are many possible interpretations – but no single theory can fully explain this remarkable text.
In its style, it is elegant and eloquent – yet conspicuously absent are the suave and witty ironies of Wilde’s earlier writing. Indeed, every line of “De Profundis” burns with heart-on-sleeve sincerity. In content, it is many things: a gruesome account of a horrific prison system, an outburst of pain and bitterness, an introspective reflection on personal transformation, an ambivalent yet heartfelt love-letter, and even a religious contemplation of sin and redemption. Wilde acknowledges flaws and failings in his character; and he believes that his prison-life has had a beneficial effect, cleansing him of his worldliness and superficiality, while endowing him with greater empathy and spiritual depth.
The fragments that I have chosen to set to music here form a highly condensed version of Wilde’s lengthy text. In keeping with Wilde’s alternation between personal expression (in which he writes in the first person) and his more generalized observations, I have alternated between a tenor soloist and a choir – creating a small-scale cantata in six movements. The fourth movement, the Latin “De Profundis” for a-cappella choir, is not part of Wilde’s text, but its inclusion seemed appropriate here.
TEXT (excerpted from the 1908 edition)
Chorus: Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow, sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound, a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
Soloist: I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said, "Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark, and has the nature of infinity."
Chorus: To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.
Soloist: While there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden away somewhere in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility.
Chorus: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine: Domine, exaudi vocem meam fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae. Si iniquitates observabis, Domine: Domine, quis sustinebit. Quia apud te propitiatio est; propter legem tuam sustinui te, Domine. Sustinuit anima mea in verbum eius: Speravit anima mea in Domino. A custodia matutina usque ad noctem speret Israel in Domino. Quia apud Dominum misericordia, et copiosa apud eum redemptio. Et ipse redimet Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus eius.
Soloist: I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are worse things in the world than that. I am quite candid when I say that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my heart against the world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread from door to door. If I got nothing from the house of the rich, I would get something at the house of the poor.
Chorus: Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little always share.
Soloist: I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature, this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.
Chorus: When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself.
The composer writes: In 1895 the celebrated author Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency. The fashionable London dandy spent the next two years in four of Her Majesty’s prisons: Newgate, Pentonville, Wandsworth and finally Reading Goal. In these prisons, he was subjected to a deliberately cruel daily regime of hard labour, harsh penalties and near-total isolation. To make matters even worse, during these two years Wilde’s mother died, his wife left him (changing her name), and he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Productions of his plays came to a halt. He was, in modern parlance, “cancelled.”
For Wilde, incarceration was a radically life-changing experience. It had a dangerously harmful impact on his physical health, from which he never fully recovered. (He died just four years after his release.) Also, his time in prison led him to thoroughly re-examine his life and values. In 1897, he documented his thoughts in a lengthy, 80-page letter – an “epistle,” if you will – ostensibly addressed to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, but probably also intended for eventual public consumption.
The publication of Wilde’s letter has a complicated history. Excerpts first appeared in print in 1905, given the title “De Profundis” by Wilde’s literary executor, Robert Ross. This Latin phrase, which means “out of the depths” in English, is a reference to the opening of Psalm 130: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.” Expanded editions of Wilde’s “De Profundis” were published in 1908 and 1949. It was not until 1962 that a complete and accurate version of the text appeared in print.
And what are we, in the 21st century, to make of “De Profundis”? Is it a tragic example of “victim self-blaming”? Or a sanctimonious mea culpa, designed to restore its author’s social standing? There are many possible interpretations – but no single theory can fully explain this remarkable text.
In its style, it is elegant and eloquent – yet conspicuously absent are the suave and witty ironies of Wilde’s earlier writing. Indeed, every line of “De Profundis” burns with heart-on-sleeve sincerity. In content, it is many things: a gruesome account of a horrific prison system, an outburst of pain and bitterness, an introspective reflection on personal transformation, an ambivalent yet heartfelt love-letter, and even a religious contemplation of sin and redemption. Wilde acknowledges flaws and failings in his character; and he believes that his prison-life has had a beneficial effect, cleansing him of his worldliness and superficiality, while endowing him with greater empathy and spiritual depth.
The fragments that I have chosen to set to music here form a highly condensed version of Wilde’s lengthy text. In keeping with Wilde’s alternation between personal expression (in which he writes in the first person) and his more generalized observations, I have alternated between a tenor soloist and a choir – creating a small-scale cantata in six movements. The fourth movement, the Latin “De Profundis” for a-cappella choir, is not part of Wilde’s text, but its inclusion seemed appropriate here.
TEXT (excerpted from the 1908 edition)
Chorus: Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow, sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound, a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
Soloist: I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said, "Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark, and has the nature of infinity."
Chorus: To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.
Soloist: While there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden away somewhere in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility.
Chorus: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine: Domine, exaudi vocem meam fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae. Si iniquitates observabis, Domine: Domine, quis sustinebit. Quia apud te propitiatio est; propter legem tuam sustinui te, Domine. Sustinuit anima mea in verbum eius: Speravit anima mea in Domino. A custodia matutina usque ad noctem speret Israel in Domino. Quia apud Dominum misericordia, et copiosa apud eum redemptio. Et ipse redimet Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus eius.
Soloist: I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are worse things in the world than that. I am quite candid when I say that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my heart against the world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread from door to door. If I got nothing from the house of the rich, I would get something at the house of the poor.
Chorus: Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little always share.
Soloist: I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature, this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.
Chorus: When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself.
