Malhaar: A Requiem for Water

Mahlaar: A Requiem for Water Reena Esmail Yale Choral Artists (Jeffrey Douma, conductor) Saili Oak, Hindustani vocalist Rohit Panchakshari, tabla Michael Yeung, percussion Sarah Yanovitch Vitale, soprano Yiran Zhao, soprano Noah Horn, tenor Program note: In Hindustani music, Malhaar refers to a family of raags that beckon rain. As the legend goes, the greatest musicians could cause a downpour from even the most severely parched skies by the power of their song. This is the inspiration for Malhaar: A Requiem for Water. As drought worsened in Southern California, I yearned for a way to process the rising panic. The work intertwines texts from the traditional Latin Requiem mass alongside the work of Wendell Berry and William O’Daly, along with interspersed Hindi. It traces a trajectory of beauty and awe of water, the fear and devastation around its loss, an answered plea of atonement, and eventually a promise of a new cycle of life, as the water returns to the skies. This is a hopeful requiem. While the collective loss has been so tremendous, we can still hold out hope that if we change our relationship to the earth, we might beckon the rain back. 0:00 I. Holy Water 5:43 II. Requiem Aeternam 12:14 III. Skeptical Bell 15:51 Interlude: Sakhi Neer Bharan 21:26 IV. Lacrimosa 27:31 Interlude: Sakhi Neer Bharan II 30:25 V. Agnus Dei 36:34 VI. Questions for God 39:14 VII. The Dream of the Waterfall/In Paradisum