9/11: A morning for reflection. The horror and surreality of that September morning, now 21 years ago, will never be forgotten. When my telephone (a land line!) rang around 9:00, I was already at work on my home computer (a Macintosh!), oblivious to the news. I picked up. A friend was on the line. She said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I imagined the Empire State Building and the B-25 accident, back in the 1940s. I was thinking maybe a piper. Bad enough in itself, certainly, but accidents do happen. Then she said one of the towers “fell over.” That was what sent me to the TV.
I had parents in the air that morning, on the way to China. The first leg of their journey took them west across Pennsylvania. Thankfully, they were not on United States Airlines Flight 93, that crashed near Shanksville, southeast of Pittsburgh, at 10:03.
The phone lines were jammed. Nobody owned a cell phone. It was a long day until I learned that their flight had been grounded in Pittsburgh.
My heart goes out to those who died senselessly, and for their survivors, for whom the day remains most vivid and painful, I’m sure.
It was a dark turning point for America at the start of a new century, and a new millennium. I wonder if we ever fully appreciated how good we had it here in the halcyon days of the late 20th century?
Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of music written in response to the horrific events of that morning, and the pain, heroism, and sacrifice. I’ve heard a lot of it, and for me, none of it as successful as Robert Moran’s “Trinity Requiem,” a masterpiece of solace and consolation.
The work was composed in 2011 for Trinity Wall Street, the so-called “Ground Zero Church” in Lower Manhattan, to mark the tenth anniversary of the attacks.
Here’s an interview I recorded with Bob shortly after the release of the CD (which I tweaked for rebroadcast last year), followed by a complete performance of the piece, a great balm for troubled times. If you’re not in the mood for the chit-chat, jump to the 16-minute mark for some truly lovely, reflective music.
https://www.wwfm.org/webcasts/2021-09-02/the-lost-chord-september-5-the-persistence-of-memory