Motet notes - Primosch
Primosch: The Call
James Primosch (1956-2021)
Thirty years after setting George Herbert’s "The Call" in a folk style for use by the Catholic Campus Ministry at Columbia University, I have returned to the text with a setting for Emmanuel Church that retains some melodic elements of the first version. While I usually treat a text in a linear manner from beginning to end, in this piece I have broken open Herbert’s tightly bound form by freely repeating and fragmenting the poem in two contrapuntal Fantasias based on musical motifs from the Chorales that frame the motet.
As was the case with seven previous motets, I gratefully offer The Call as a gift to the Emmanuel community. But this piece is dedicated to a particular member of that community, to John Harbison on his 75th birthday: admired composer, generous advocate, dear friend.
©James Primosch 2013
We mourn the loss of our beloved friend, composer and collaborator Jim Primosch. For nearly thirty years the Emmanuel community has been the blessed beneficiaries of Jim's consummate artistry, unwavering commitment to text, devotion to the divine and gracious spirit. We offer his motet The Call, composed in 2013, as a tribute and honor to the completed life of God's servant James Primosch.
On his final day, Jim's wife, Mary Murphy recalled the George Herbert poem that was a favorite of both of theirs:
"The text is a direct invitation to experience God not as a separate entity, but directly, as a fundamental reality, and to find there breath, life, our very core. Jim found freedom in his relationship with God by offering the gifts God bestowed on him in service for the greater good, whether he was playing piano, composing, writing, teaching, mentoring, or at home, in what we always called “life without applause”. He managed, in a time when art is not made to serve God, to do just that. It’s what gave his life meaning and purpose. For him it was all about being a vehicle for something beyond himself and listening to his greatest works allows us to experience that transcendence. He managed to achieve this by challenging himself to be fully what he understood God intended him to be – by according his will with God’s intent. He understood that very early and he never wavered from this single-minded search to become what he was meant to be. No wonder options annoyed him; they only got in the way."
©Ryan Turner