crisis of confidence

SATB, a cappella

This work is the stand-in for the “Kyrie” of my reworking of the mass ordinaries, there’s something i have to say, and because that movement of the genre has such a perceptible, repetitious form, the work (based on a text by American poet Robert Ressler) offers a refrain. The question that keeps returning alludes to the notion that sometimes–to quote theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber–“I have only my confession…of my own real brokenness…to offer.” By the final bars of the movement, though, a transformation has taken place.

crisis of confidence was commissioned by The Choral Project (Daniel Hughes, conductor) and received its premiere on June 24, 2023.  It is dedicated to the memory of Ned Rorem.

The Text

By Robert Ressler (b. 1988)

I feel full of anger.
Sometimes I hate.
I am vain, cruel, and ungenerous.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

Do not come near me.
Lest you be tainted by this misery I have made.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

I am unworthy, disqualified.
My heart seems to move through my life like a thresher.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

That I am still here seems a miracle;
This world a lesson I’m not meant to understand.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

There is a place in my heart that feels so
inhospitable that no sound can ever reach it;
a grief so thick it occupies every room I step into.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

But only fool and fanatic are certain.
That I am confused is a good sign.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

My brokenness is not the final word.
I am not the worst things that I have ever done.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

To open a window from my heart to the world.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

To be startled back to the truth of who I am.
To wake up laughing at what I thought was my grief.

How do I know what I’m doing is right?

I long to be forgiven
and returned to myself.

Performed by The Choral Project
(Daniel Hughes, conductor).