Content area
Abstract
Jonah's Prayer is a choral work for solo tenor, a mixed choir of not fewer than 30 members, two pianos and a few percussion instruments to be played by choir members. The piece lasts about 13 minutes; it is a work intended for church choir use but could be performed in other venues as well.
The essay on Jonah's Prayer is divided into three chapters. The beginning of Chapter One furnishes a brief account of Jonah's legend found in the Old Testament. This is followed by a discussion about how the legend of Jonah has inspired musical composition. The last part of Chapter One introduces three borrowed pentatonic tunes that form the basis for the piece and describes the sections in Jonah's Prayer.
Chapter Two examines how numerology influences the generation of the DISTRESS IDEA and GOD IDEA, two principal ideas in Jonah's Prayer . The audiovisual presentations of numerals and the symbolic meanings of some numbers used in Jonah's Prayer are also discussed.
The first part of Chapter Three discusses the use of indeterminacy in this piece. The second part studies how Jonah's story, the pitch class G and indeterminacy effect formal organization. The last part of Chapter Three describes the musical and nonmusical influences Jonah's Prayer may receive.
