A suite of movements from The Street (Fourteen Meditations on the Stations of the Cross)

Nico Muhly (b. 1981) and Alice Goodman (b. 1958)

Station I. Jesus is condemned to death
Station II. Jesus takes up his Cross
Station VI. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Station X. Jesus is stripped of his garments
Station XIII. Jesus is taken down from the Cross

The Street is a set of meditations on the fourteen stations of the cross scored for solo harp. Each movement can, in some performances, be paired with plainchant, chosen to augment and in some cases provide counterpoint to the traditional narrative of Good Friday. The spark for each movement is original texts by Alice Goodman — either read aloud or read in silence — which are simultaneously specific, evocative, mysterious, and poetic. Often, a single line will provide 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. This two-note descending motif becomes the governing gesture of the piece.“Remember the carpenter’s work” (II) suggests an honest, folksy labor, work done with the hands. Veronica, looking at her sudarium (VI), notices that “He is printed in molecules of blood and sweat,” and hears a chord, diffused and delicate, as if seen under a microscope. As Joseph, Nicodemus, and Peter take down the body from the cross, and prepare the burial ritual, the music becomes simpler still, built on a simple drone on middle C: it’s going through the motions, but somehow transformed into something uneasy.

Nico Muhly

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Quatuor Van Kuijk is an established international presence performing regularly at venues including the Wigmore Hall in London, Sage Gateshead, and Snape Maltings; Philharmonie de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and Salle  Gaveau in Paris; Tonhalle, Zurich; Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Vienna; Het Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam; Berliner Philharmonie and Konzerthaus; Kölner Philharmonie; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Tivoli Concert Series, Denmark; Konserthuset Stockholm; and at festivals including the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, Edinburgh International, Cheltenham, Heidelberg, Fredriksvaerk, Lockenhaus, Davos, Verbier, Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier/Radio France, Evian, Auvers-sur Oise, Stavanger and Trondheim (Norway), Concentus Moraviae (Czech Republic), Haydn/Esterházy (Hungary), and Eilat (Israel). 

The quartet embarks on substantial international tours each season. 2023-24 saw them return to North America, for a tour which included their Carnegie Hall debut, as well as to Asia, where highlights included concerts at Shanghai’s Symphony Hall and Tokyo’s Hamarikyu Asahi Hall. Upcoming tours include a return to Belgium in December, as well as  another visit to North America in Spring 2025 alongside harpist Parker Ramsay. Collaborators include guitarist Sean Shibe, mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, harpist Parker Ramsay, clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe, Quatuor Danel, and composers Baptiste Trotignon and Benjamin Attahir. 

Recording exclusively for Alpha Classics, the ensemble’s debut recording, Mozart, was released to outstanding critical acclaim – CHOC de Classica, DIAPASON D’OR DECOUVERTE. Following celebrated discs of Debussy and Ravel, and Schubert, they continued their ongoing exploration of Mozart with two further releases across 2020. The complete cycle of Mendelssohn’s quartets was released across 2022 – 2023 (the second volume of which winning the ‘Quarterly Critic’s Choice’ Prize of the Deutschen Schallplattenkritik). This season they present ‘Impressions Parisiennes’ – a collection of French melody transcriptions alongside a new work by Baptiste Trotignon – in homage to the composers of those melodies.  

Van Kuijk Quartet’s international accolades boast First, Best Beethoven, and Best Haydn Prizes at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet competition; First Prize, and an Audience Award at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition; as well as  becoming laureates of the Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy. They were BBC New Generation Artists from 2015-17, as well as ECHO Rising Stars for the 2017-18 season. The ensemble was resident at ProQuartet, Paris, where they studied with members of the Alban Berg, Artemis, and Hagen quartets. Originally students of the Ysaye Quartet, they went on to work with Günter Pichler at the Escuela Superior de Mùsica Reina Sofia in Madrid, supported generously by the International Institute of Chamber Music, Madrid. The Quartet is supported by Pirastro and SPEDIDAM and is grateful to the Centre National de La Musique and Mécénat Musical Société Générale for their sponsorship. 

Parker Ramsay has forged a career defying easy categorization. Equally at home on modern and period harps, he pursues his passions in tackling new and underperformed works and bringing his instrument to new audiences. Recent and upcoming performances include solo performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Phillips Collection, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, IRCAM, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. He has collaborated with ensembles such as Mark Morris Dance Group, Latitude 49, Apollo’s Fire, the Van Kuijk Quartet and has undertaken residencies at the University of California, San Diego, Princeton University, and IRCAM.

His 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). In 2021, he premiered Omolu, a new work for amplified harp by Marcos Balter, commissioned by the Miller Theatre at Columbia University for their podcast series Mission: Commission. His last album, released in October 2022, features The Street, a new concert-length work for solo harp and text by Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman. In 2023, he made his debut in Paris with Josh Levine’s Anyway, a new work for harp and electronics commissioned by IRCAM. In 2024, he made his Baltimore debut with flutist Brandon Patrick George, and his Los Angeles and Bay Area debuts with Nico Muhly and Alice Goodman’s The Street at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA and Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley. Early September 2024, he made his debut at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht performing Lucy McKnight’s when i am among the trees. His Canadian debut was made by premiering a new chamber concerto by Jared Miller at Latitude 49’s Sound Atlas Festival in Calgary, and his Dublin debut included a new evening length work for harp and voice by Connor Way and Iarla Ó Lionáird. In 2024, he will premiered new works by Aida Shirazi and David Fulmer and undertake tours with the Van Kuijk Quartet, IRCAM, and Mark Morris Dance Group.

Alongside gambist Arnie Tanimoto, Parker is co-director of A Golden Wire, a period instrument ensemble based in New York. He has presented talks, performances and lectures on period instruments at the Smithsonian Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham Baroque, and the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a writer, he has been published in VAN Magazine, Early Music America Magazine, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

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. In 2014, he was awarded First Prize at the Sweelinck International Organ Competition.

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