A note from Alice Goodman
The religious imagination makes what it needs out of what it’s given. You may not have been among the crowds that filled Jerusalem during that first Holy Week; you may have been born in a different age. Never mind. You can make the pilgrimage, walk through the streets, pray, and you are there. You may not be able to manage the pilgrimage. Never mind. Go down to church. Around the walls there are fourteen images of the Stations of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa recreated for local use. Walk around them, pausing to pray. Imagine you are there, in that time and in that place. Here is this tiny schematic scene; a picture or a carving. What is in it for you? What do your senses tell you? You are to be attuned to every vibration of guilt and sorrow, love, and boredom. The membrane between the religious imagination and the erotic imagination is semi-permeable, incredibly thin. This is what St Robert Southwell SJ (1561–95, martyr and poet) acknowledged when he wrote, ‘Passions I allow and loves I approve, onely I would wishe that men would alter their object and better their intent.’
The Street is a set of meditations on the fourteen traditional Stations of the Cross. That’s what attracted me to the project. Traditionally, each Station is given a meditation and a prayer. You look at the image, you hear or read the meditation, you say the prayer: you take it in and move on. Writing these texts was the kind of technical challenge that as a librettist I’ve always found liberating
A note from Nico Muhly
When writing The Street, I realised that the initial challenge was going to be treating Alice’s text not as a libretto to be set (as, of course, it wasn’t one), but as a set of meditations containing clues to how the attendant music might sound. In this sense, the texts do function as a sort of hidden ritualistic play, themselves referencing a ritual, itself referencing a single afternoon in history. The presence of the plainchant provided other, more subtle sources of material. It became immediately clear that I needed to work with a set of “reference images” — musical building blocks which could act as touchpoints along the route of the piece: The Cross, The Hands, and Holding.
STATION I
Often, a single line of text provided the starting-point for the music: when Jesus is condemned to death (Station I), Goodman describes the crowd shouting crucify him: “the pitch dropping as it passes where you stand.” The harp, in turn, plays a modern version of the same, a kind of digital-delay effect, where the pitch creeps down the scale. These two chords — a minor chord falling into a hollow suspended chord — outline a highly abstracted cruciform shape, and this Cross motif appears in various guises throughout the piece.
STATION II
“Remember the carpenter’s work” suggests an honest, folksy labor, work done with the hands. Alice’s text often point towards the quotidian nature of burial, of making, of working, and here, the music is unaffected and simple; over it we hear echoes of the chant “Crucem tuam adoramus, Domine” (We adore Thy Cross, O Lord). These simple chords come to represent dirt, the ground, the trees, and work done with the hands.
STATION III
“These are the street sounds of Jerusalem, layers of them, all the various accents and dialects of those come up for the Passover; throat-clearing, street vendors, laughter, excuses, curses.” Here, the noises of the street are the primary focus. The texts almost ignores Jesus entirely, having the effect of making us focus on him even more. The harp functions as a clattering, gossipy instrument here, with only occasional nods towards the man silently falling on the ground.
STATION IV
A cradle song and the music of Holding. This theme, expressed here in its purest form is less about pitch or harmony, but about rhythm; it is a rocking song, berceuse, which is subjected to various manipulations in later movements.
STATION V
“Your cross is the cross of forced labour; your yoke chafes and your burden is as much as you can bear.” A lumbering, awkward ostinato underneath fast and agitated music. A nod towards the Holding music finishes the movement.
STATION VI
Veronica, looking at her sudarium, notices that “He is printed in molecules of blood and sweat,” and hears a chord, diffused and delicate, as if seen under a microscope. I wanted this to feel businesslike and almost scientific; I rememer reading about the teams of people who go around “verifying” holy relics and what an extraordinary task it is to do this specific kind of forensic work. The chords attendant to the “silent man” in station III reäppear here, imagining Veronica as an old woman, quietly contemplating the cloth.
STATION VII
A narrator — all of us, perhaps — causes Jesus’s second fall: “My fault. I put out my foot and tripped him. What can I say?” and the harp responds with a bullying, rhythmically intense unbroken set of shifting, stumbling gestures. The harp plays aggressive, mocking, almost siren-like gestures coming in and out of focus.
STATION VIII
This is the most explicitly chant-based movement, in which much of the chant “Filiæ Jerusalem” (“Daughters of Jerusalem, come and see this martyr wearing the crown...”) appears verbatim. Each phrase is offset by a gentle, reassuring gesture.
STATION IX
Station IX is the most thematically interwoven of the movements: it begins with a fall in super slow-motion, always incorporating the Cross motif both as harmony and, eventually, as the doppler-effect phrase we heard in Station I. “Jesus, there he is, on hands and knees among the broken vessels” suggests a return of the manual labour music, over which a new tune emerges; this is the only time I set one of Alice’s texts explicitly; the line “However low I fall, let me not fall far from you” is played by the harp, but could be sung in the right context. It is repeated thrice, interrupted by the Cross motif in violent, blocklike chords.
STATION X
“Are you ashamed that your eyes are drawn irresistibly to the centre of the picture? You want to see, see for yourself, despite yourself. You want to see the organs of generation, the sign of full humanity, vulnerability, and covenant.” As in station VII, this text implicates us and accuses us. The music is jagged, but the line “His knees are skinned like a child” suggests a memory of the cradle song. The chant “Astiterunt reges Terræ” (The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed) appears briefly.
STATION XI
“The nail sinks into flesh, descends through tendon, bone, wood. And another. And another, and the rich, ferrous smell of blood.” The harpist plays with a guitar pick or credit card or other plectrum, creating a strange, otherworldly, metallic sound.“The man knows what he’s doing. This will hold” invites a perverse statement of the Hands motif: it is the soldier’s job, and he is working with his hands and with wood, but it is terrible work.
STATION XII
This is essentially a harmonisation of the chant “Tenebræ factæ sunt” (Darkness fell...) broken up by loud, violent interjections. Alice’s text asks, “Later they said that that the sun was eclipsed, the veil of the Temple torn, the dead rose from their tombs. Maybe so. Isn’t it enough though that he died?” The harp, nodding towards this, plays a kind of thunder effect, which is immediately brushed aside to return to the simple work of the plainchant.
STATION XIII
She writes: “Two men on ladders, one with the pincers to pull out the nails. Gently. Not that gentleness matters to him now, but not a bone shall be broken. This is not the kind of work we’re used to. Let’s get it done before it’s too dark to see,” and in station XIV, after the moment of death, we focus on the practical work of getting the body into the tomb; we don’t yet know what the rest of the weekend holds. The music in XIII is procedural, slightly wavering, and obeys a sort of functional logic; it consists of simple chords over a single repeated pitch, and the steady tempo of ritualised work.
STATION XIV
“Before sunset and the appearance of the first star in the sky, just before the beginning of the sabbath, two men enshroud a body. Never have they done this work before. Though well-versed in the laws and traditions involved in the task, their hands lack skill. Wash the body. Lay it out. Fetch the clean linen cloths.” It starts with the Holding music, the enshroudng of the body rhyming with the swaddling cloths thirty-three years early. Goodman ends her meditations with the Mourner’s Kaddish, and the harp, having played a remembered cradle-song chastened by more recent memories fast forwards an hour, and ends with a vision of the night sky, punctuated by three statements of the Cross motif, finally de-knotted and allowed, after a fashion, to resolve.
The Street
Alice Goodman
1. Jesus is condemned to death
Did you expect it to go any other way? It makes a difference though to hear the words clattering out into the waiting room. The weight of the apprehensive moment. Yes, but he could have died at any time. He could have been stillborn, or slaughtered with the Innocents. He could have died on the road, or of sickness, or by accident. He was always going to die. Conceived as our mortal flesh, he bore our infirmities. Yes, and we killed him deliberately. We put on the black cap and pronounced his death. ‘Take him out and crucify him.’ There’s the Doppler effect in the crowd below, shouting ‘CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!’ the pitch dropping as it passes where you stand.
Vinea mea electa, ego te plantavi:
quomodo conversa es in amaritudinem,
ut me crucifigures et Barrabbam dimitteres.
O vineyard, my chosen one. I planted thee.
How is thy sweetness turned into bitterness,
to crucify me and take Barabbas in my place?
2. Jesus takes up his Cross
Remember the carpenter’s bench; the smell of the cut wood. Cedar, cypress, pine, or oak. Light coming through the door. Or an overcast day, with the sawdust trodden down. Remember learning the names of trees: cedar; cypress; pine. He knows how to bend to lift this beam and how to straighten his back. He’s done it before. This is sound wood, and it will bear him. This is the oak of Mamre under whose shade Abraham sat until the three angels appeared. This is the cypress that made the rafter over Solomon’s bed. This is the cedar from the forests of Lebanon, the very image of majesty. This is green wood. He bends and lifts it. And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.
Crucem tuam adoramus, Domine
et sanctum resurrectionem tuam laudamus, et glorificamus
ecce enim propter lignum venit gaudium in universo mundo.
We adore Thy Cross, O Lord
and we praise and glorify Thy holy Resurrection
for behold by the wood of the Cross joy has come into the whole world.
3. Jesus falls for the first time
‘My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ It’s one thing to say it, another to witness. The sheer weight of the cross was unexpected, as was the mass of human depravity, ignorance, cruelty, apathy; the sediment built up since before the Flood. A man fell among thieves, who stripped him and left him bleeding. He never said a mumbling word. These are the street sounds of Jerusalem, layers of them, all the various accents and dialects of those come up for the Passover; throat-clearing, street vendors, laughter, excuses, curses. The sound of a slap and a child’s wail. The cattle are lowing, and the sheep and goats bleat together in one herd. Hobnailed sandals scrape the stone. The man falling makes almost no sound.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi.
Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti:
parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.
O my people, what have I done to thee?
Or how have I offended you?Answer me.
Because I led thee out of the land of Egypt:
thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.
4. Jesus meets his Mother
Nothing can be said to console her. No one is more painfully aware. A sword will pierce your own soul too. Her son is perfect. He has held her finger in the grip of his hand, she has kissed the soles of his feet. She remembers the day of his circumcision: a bridegroom of blood you are to me. First blood shed since the cord was cut. ‘Who is my mother?’ he asked ‘Who are my brothers and my sisters?’ For three years she stepped aside, now she has come up to Jerusalem. She takes her place by the side of the road of sorrows to see him and be seen in that first long look between mother and child. ‘I now see bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my self before me.’ ‘Woman, behold your son.’ She sees the place under his rib where the sword will go. ‘Behold your mother.’
Stabat Mater dolorosa
Iuxta crucem lacrimosa
Dum pendebat Filius.
Cuius animam gementem
Contristatam et dolentem
Pertransivit gladius.
O quam tristis et afflicta
Fuit illa benedicta
Mater unigeniti!
Quae moerebat et dolebat,
Pia Mater, dum videbat
Nati poenas incliti.
Quis est homo qui non fleret,
Matrem Christi si videret
In tanto supplicio?
Quis non posset contristari,
Christi Matrem contemplari
Dolentem cum Filio?
At the cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.
Through her soul, of joy bereaved,
bowed with anguish, deeply grieved,
now at length the sword hath passed.
Oh how sad and sore distressed
was that mother highly blessed,
of the sole-begotten One!
Christ above in torment hangs;
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying glorious Son.
Is there one who would not weep,
Whelm'd in miseries so deep
Christ's dear Mother to behold?
Can the human heart refrain
From partaking in her pain,
In that Mother's pain untold?
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross
He didn’t choose to help. He was compelled. With half an eye they could see he was up to the job; he was a big guy up from the south. O Simon from Cyrene, father of Rufus and Alexander, you were the first to take up your cross and follow. Your cross is the cross of forced labour: your yoke chafes and your burden is as much as you can bear. Jesus is walking in front of you, you are hard on his heels. What brought you to Jerusalem? Were you here for the Passover? Going up to the Temple to make the sacrifice and eat the lamb? Pharoah enslaved us and laid burdens upon us, and look, here we are. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall not oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not oppress a stranger, for I, the Lord your God am holy. Even here, even in occupied Jerusalem. Your children will praise your name.
Senex puerum portabat:
puer autem senem regebat:
quem virgo peperit,
et post partum virgo permansit:
ipsum quem genuit, adoravit.
The old man carried the child,
but the child ruled the old man;
him whom the Virgin brought forth,
and after childbirth remained a virgin
him whom she bore, she adored.
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
What became of that woman who stepped into the line of traffic and wiped his face with her veil? She will keep this cloth forever because it smells like his sweat, and because it absorbed a little of his blood, and, it may be, tears and phlegm. She covered her hair modestly before she went out; she covered her face so no stranger would see it; she never told her name. She touched him, not with the hem of her garment, but with the whole cloth. Consider what this means, and whether you’d have dared do it. Without asking, she unveiled herself to wipe his thorn-crowned face. He is printed in molecules of blood and sweat. ‘Thy face, Lord, will I seek,’ we say, and through her came to see his face and live.
Plange quasi virgo, plebs mea,
ululate, pastores, in cinere et cilicio
quia veniet dies Domini magna et amara valde.
Weep like a virgin, my people,
howl, keepers of the flock, covered with ashes and wearing hair-shirts,
for the great and very bitter day of the Lord will come.
7. Jesus falls for the second time
Does his foot hit a stumbling-stone? Maybe one of the Stolpersteine standing proud of the road on the way to Golgotha? Or does he fall beneath the burden of our sins? Not ours. Mine. He falls the second time because of me. My fault. I put out my foot and tripped him. What can I say? I couldn’t resist the temptation. The work of an instant. He was looking so pathetic, I couldn’t bear it. The whole crowd needed a pratfall to relieve the tension. For my sins, I couldn’t bear his sorrow. So he fell for my sins? That’s about it. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread by the roadside, watching him fall and be hauled back onto his feet. Remember, thou art dust and to dust shalt thou return.
Caligaverunt oculi mei a fletu meo:
quia elongatus est a me, qui consolabatur me:
Videte, omnes populi, si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.
My eyes are darkened by my tears:
For he is far from me that comforted me:
See, O all ye people, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
The daughters of Jerusalem are crying, genuinely crying. They are office cleaners, night shift nurses, shopping cart women, security guards on the Métro, clerks in bodegas, nail artists, students, policewomen, sex workers, all their wet faces turned up; a river of faces. Do not be afraid. When you are living in a world of lies, hearing the hard truth is a comfort. Well, you don’t need to be afraid any more. It’s good to see the truth and know it for certain, that Love, unimaginably vast and powerful, eternal, magnificent, working wonders; is infinitely vulnerable to rough handling.
Filiae Hierusalem, venite et videte Christum cum coronis qui coronavit eum
Dominus in die solemnitatis et laetitiae.
Daughters of Jerusalem, come and see Christ wearing the crowns with which the
Lord has adorned him on this solemn day of rejoicing.
9. Jesus falls for the third time
O felix culpa! Happy fall! Don’t you see? Jesus falls because he comes down to us, and always has, and we are there on the ground looking up. He came down to be among us. He lowered himself to the ground with becoming gravity, gravity which he himself had created. Willingly accepting the accidents of our nature, humbling himself, going into exile. This falling is a blessing: he touches the earth and blesses it. Jesus, there he is, on hands and knees among the broken vessels. He gathers grace. What he made he can mend, even what we have marred. Holy Jesus, full of grace, you emptied yourself for our sake to fall broken by the stones of your own city. However low I fall, let me not fall far from you.
O vos omnes qui transitis per viam:
attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus.
O all ye that pass by the way,
attend and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
They part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. His mother wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, and from that moment to this Jesus has never been seen naked. Do you see him now? Or are you distracted by the soldiers gambling? Or wondering about the seamless garment? None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD. We have stripped our Lord naked as the day he was born. Jesus is shivering. His knees are skinned like a child’s; his back cross-hatched with blood, like a slave’s. Are you ashamed that your eyes are drawn irresistibly to the centre of the picture? You want to see, see for yourself, despite yourself. You want to see the organs of generation, the sign of full humanity, vulnerability, and covenant. You want to see Jesus naked as Adam in Paradise, naked, but woefully battered by the Fall.
Astiterunt reges terrae,
et principes convenerunt in unum,
adversus Dominum et adversus Christum eius.
Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea,
et super vestem meam miserunt sortem.
Insurrexerunt in me testes iniqui,
et mentita est iniquitas sibi.
The kings of the earth rise up,
and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed.
They parted my garments amongst them;
and upon my vesture they cast lots.
Unjust witnesses rise up against me, And iniquity lies to itself.
11. Jesus is nailed to the Cross
Except I shall see in his hand the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. So much happens so fast once you get outside the city limits. Three men to be crucified and raised up to view. The crowd stands back, nervous to the point of laughter. Where are the friends that followed him? There’s one. And there are the muffled women. The nail sinks into flesh, descends through tendon, bone, wood. And another. And another, and the rich, ferrous smell of blood. The man knows what he’s doing. This will hold. ‘If you are the Messiah, get down from your cross,’ cry the priests and the officials. ‘If you’re the Messiah, save yourself and us,’ Gestas says out of the corner of his mouth.
Ego clamavi, quoniam exaudisti me, Deus:
inclina aurem tuam, et exaudi verba mea.
I have called upon thee, O God, for thou shalt hear me:
incline thine ear to me, and hearken unto my words.
12. Jesus dies on the Cross
He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. ‘I sin every day without repenting, the fear of death disturbs me. Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replies somehow, turns his head, makes the connection. ‘This is the truth. Today you shall be with me in Paradise.’ Then, after a few more words, the last breath rattles out, and his face changes. Later they said that that the sun was eclipsed, the veil of the Temple torn, the dead rose from their tombs. Maybe so. Isn’t it enough though that he died? He shrank somehow into himself. The eyes became jelly, the mouth hung open a little, the skin of his face went yellow and grey. Jesus of Nazareth. King of the Jews. One soldier, the one not occupied breaking legs, pushes up with his lance, an iron willow leaf fixed on a pole. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Thick blood and thin water splash over his feet onto the ground. I can see it all.
Tenebrae factae sunt, dum crucifixissent Jesum populi: et circa horam nonam exclamavit Jesus voce magna: Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti? Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum.
Darkness fell when the people crucified Jesus: and about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.
13. Jesus is taken down from the Cross
Pilate gave permission. Why not? He had nothing against the Nazarene, who was in any case, dead. And Joseph of Arimathea knew how to ask such a favour. Joseph was hauled out of the pit by his brethren. Jesus is taken down from the cross by Joseph; by Joseph, by bald-headed Peter, by Nicodemus, who’s stopped being worried about appearances, Two men on ladders, one with the pincers to pull out the nails. Gently. Not that gentleness matters to him now, but not a bone shall be broken. This is not the kind of work we’re used to. Let’s get it done before it’s too dark to see. Gently now, before rigor mortis sets in.
Salva nos domine vigilantes
custodi nos dormientes
ut vigilemus cum Christo
et requiescamus in pace.
Custodi nos, domine, ut pupillam oculi:
sub umbra alarum tuarum protege nos.
Preserve us, O Lord, while waking,
and guard us while sleeping,
that awake we may watch with Christ,
and asleep we may rest in peace.
Keep us as the apple of an eye:
hide us under the shadow of thy wings.
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb
Before sunset and the appearance of the first star in the sky, just before the beginning of the sabbath, two men enshroud a body. Never have they done this work before. Though well-versed in the laws and traditions involved in the task, their hands lack skill. Wash the body. Lay it out. Fetch the clean linen cloths. Fold the shroud like this, and the other cloth over the face. In every fold, pour spices. Spices and more spices; myrrh and aloes. Thou wilt not give thy holy one to see corruption. Jesus never hesitated to touch the dead—the widow’s son being carried out of Nain for burial, Jairus’ little girl laid on the bed while the mourners wailed outside. Every touch tells them: Jesus is dead, as dead as earth. They know when one is dead and when one lives. While still inside the tomb they pray: ‘Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honoured, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings, and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever uttered in the world; and let all say, Amen.’
Nico Muhly, born in 1981, is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, chamber music and sacred music. He’s received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera: Two Boys (2011), and Marnie (2018); Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall, the Tallis Scholars, King’s College and St John’s College, Cambridge, among others. He is a collaborative partner at the San Francisco Symphony and has been featured at the Barbican and the Philharmonie de Paris as composer, performer, and curator.
An avid collaborator, he has worked with choreographers Benjamin Millepied at the Paris Opéra Ballet, Bobbi Jene Smith at the Juilliard School, Justin Peck and Kyle Abraham at New York City Ballet; artists Sufjan Stevens, The National, Teitur, Anohni, James Blake and Paul Simon. His work for film includes scores for The Reader (2008) and Kill Your Darlings (2013), the BBC adaptation of Howards End (2017) and Pachinko (2022). Among his concerti are works for violin, (Shrink, for Pekka Kuusisto), organ (Register, for James McVinnie), viola (Nadia Sirota), two pianos (In Certain Circles, for Katia and Marielle Labèque) and his vocal collaborators include Iestyn Davies, Renée Fleming, and Nicholas Phan. He has collaborated with visual artists Maira Kalman and Oliver Beer, and has created site-specific pieces for the National Gallery, London, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and written articles for the Guardian, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. Recordings of his works have been released by Decca and Nonesuch, and he is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008).
Alice Goodman was born in Minnesota in 1958 into a Reform Jewish family, and educated at Harvard and at Cambridge University. In 1985 she was approached by the director Peter Sellars to write the libretto for John Adams’ opera Nixon in China, a work which is now recognised as one of the major operas of the twentieth century. Another collaboration with Peter Sellars, John Adams, and choreographer Mark Morris produced The Death of Klinghoffer, which premiered in Brussels in 1991. This opera recounts the execution of the wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists on board the Italian cruiseliner Achille Lauro in 1984. Klinghoffer drew, and continues to draw, acclaim – and vocal condemnation from some quarters – for its sympathetic and humane portrayal of both the victims and perpetrators of political violence. In1991 Goodman also translated The Magic Flute for Sellars’ production at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. More recently, Goodman has collaborated with the composer Tarik O’Regan on a cantata, A Letter of Rights, in 2015 for Salisbury Cathedral, with Peter Sellars and Benjamin Bagby on Fauvel at the Théâtre du Châtelet (March 2022), and with Nico Muhly on The Street, Stations of the Cross for harp soloist, reader, and choir (April 2022). In 1990 Goodman was accepted into the Church. She studied theology at Boston University School of Theology and Ripon College Cuddesdon, and was ordained in the Church of England in 2001. Since 2011 she has been Rector of three parishes in Cambridgeshire. Alice Goodman’s libretti were published as a NYRB Classic in May 2017, under the title History is Our Mother.
Parker Ramsay has forged a career that defies classification. Whether premiering, rediscovering, or transcribing, he dedicates himself to expanding the harp’s repertoire, bringing the instrument to conversations — and audiences — it had never before known. Ramsay has given solo performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, The 92nd Street Y, the Phillips Collection, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, IRCAM, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. He has collaborated with ensembles such Mark Morris Dance Group, Apollo’s Fire, and the Van Kuijk Quartet, and has undertaken residencies at the University of California, San Diego, Princeton University, and IRCAM.
Ramsay’s 2020 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was praised as “remarkably special” (Gramophone), “nuanced and insightful” (BBC Music Magazine), “relentlessly beautiful” (WQXR), and “marked by a keen musical intelligence” (Wall Street Journal); he celebrated the album’s release with a performance at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. His latest album, released in October 2022, features The Street, a new concert-length work for solo harp and text by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman, which premiered at King’s College, Cambridge in April 2022 and received its U.S. premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA the next month. Since then, Ramsay has performed The Street throughout the United States and United Kingdom, most recently with new choreography by Mark Morris Dance Group.
A fierce advocate for new harp music, Ramsay premieres pieces which explore the frontiers of his instrument’s capabilities. In May 2025, he debuted at New York City’s 92nd Street Y with a slate of works written in his name: the world premiere of Aida Shirazi’s A Dream Within a Dream for harp, voice, and live electronics; Marcos Balter’s Omolu, commissioned in 2021 by Columbia University’s Miller Theatre for their podcast series Mission: Commission; and Artun Çekem’s 2024 HARP (Haptic-Adaptive Remembrance Processor), which harnesses a custom touch-based interface to synthesize its operator’s live input in real time. In the 2024-25 season, he made debuts at Utrecht’s Gaudeamus Festival with Lucy McKnight’s when i am among the trees (written for a custom-built harp-organ pipe-percussion instrument); in Dublin with a new evening-length harp-and-voice work by Connor Way and Iarla Ó Lionáird; and at Montreal’s Salle Bourgie with the Quatuor Van Kuijk. In 2023, Ramsay made his Paris debut with Josh Levine’s Anyway, the culmination of a yearlong residency at IRCAM. In April 2025, he chronicled his commissioning efforts in a guest essay for The New York Times.
Equally comfortable on modern and historical harps, Ramsay co-directs the New York period-instrument ensemble A Golden Wire with viola da gamba player Arnie Tanimoto; they tour the United States extensively, having appeared at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Aspect Chamber Music Series, Chatham Baroque, and Bach Ascending. He has presented talks, performances and lectures on period instruments at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a writer, he has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Early Music America, and VAN.
In the 2025-26 season, Ramsay reprises The Street at the newly-reopened Frick Collection in New York. Also in New York, he returns to the Kaufman Music Center for a solo harp-and-harpsichord recital centered around new works by Georg Friedrich Haas and Christopher Trapani, and to The Bohemians, Brooklyn Public Library, and Aspect Chamber Music Series with A Golden Wire.
Raised in Tennessee, Parker began harp studies with his mother, Carol McClure. He served as organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge before pursuing graduate studies at Oberlin and Juilliard. He lives in New York City and is pursuing a Ph.D in historical musicology at Columbia University.
