The Best Ignatian Song feature of this blog has been on the shelf for some months. I’ve dusted it off to feature the “String Quartet No. 1: Good Friday Meditation” by Andrew Leonard, a recent Boston College graduate who is spending the summer with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Leonard, a pre-med and music major, says the piece was inspired by his experiences in the BC Urban Immersion volunteer program.
Listen to the piece here. It’s performed by the Hawthorne String Quartet, resident at Boston College.
(Here is another BC music group, playing a very different kind of music.)
When I listened to Leonard’s quartet, I thought it sounded familiar. Sure enough, it’s influenced by the third movement of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Opus 132, one of the most moving pieces of music I know. Beethoven wrote it after recovering from a near-fatal illness. He titled the third movement “A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity.” Listen to part of it in this video.
