Home.
A place we belong; a place of origin or formation; a place of rest; a place of shelter.
Home could be with family, or it could not.
Above all, home is a place of love.
Today’s program takes us through many ideas of home, but especially our place as people on earth, in communities, and as spiritual beings. We also are featuring folksongs and folk singing from several traditions, as folk music is often central to our recognition of home.
The first two pieces deal with death and sadness: a funeral text and a song about mourning in the early hours of a still night. Heinrich Schütz’ Selig sind der Toten is a motet from the early Baroque on a text taken from the Book of Revelation in Luther’s translation. This text may be familiar to the choral enthusiast and connects the first piece to the second: Selig sind der Toten serves as the bookend text of Brahms’ monumental Ein Deutsches Requiem, a requiem written to console the living more than pray for the deceased –celebrating the restful home of a departed soul.
Selig sind die Toten
Blessed are the dead who die in the lord.
Yes, the Spirit proclaims that they rest from their labors and their works follow them.
–Book of Revelation
Each of the German texts are related to a moment of grief – in the Schütz, we can imagine that the text might be said for a loved one and give hope and consolation to those left behind. In Brahms’ In stiller Nacht, a four-part setting of a folksong, the speaker is affected by the grief of another and empathizes with it. We are social beings, and our connection to each other is often strongest in the darkest parts of life. We are finally emerging from a pandemic era that saw not only the loss of loved ones but also the prolonged disconnection of communities. Choral communities, which were deemed quite dangerous due to the amount of air exchanged in a room of deeply breathing singers, endured several years of disconnection. It is this disconnection during grief that is represented in the Brahms – feeling the pain of others while being isolated from other people.
In stiller Nacht
In quiet night, at the first hour, a voice began to lament,
The nightly breeze had sweetly and gently brought the lament to me;
From bitter pain and sadness my heart has melted,
My pure tears have watered all the little flowers.
The beautiful moon would set from sadness and shine no more,
The distant stars stop their glimmering, they would cry with me.
No joyful noise or birdsongs does one hear in the air,
The animals of the wild mourn with me, on stones and in crevasses.
–Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld
Several of the pieces on today’s program were written either during the pandemic or directly in response to it. One that was written during the pandemic is Sing Out, My Soul by Marques L.A. Garrett. This joyful and upbeat number encourages boisterous and exuberant singing – an awakening from the darkness in the German pieces; the contrasting section of Sing Out, My Soul leads with the line “think not of death.”
Sing out, my soul!
Sing out, my soul, your songs of joy;
Sing as a happy bird will sing beneath a rainbow’s lovely arch in early spring.
Think not of death;
Strive not for gold;
Train up thy mind to feel content, what matters then how low your store?
What we enjoy, and not possess, makes rich or poor.
–William Henry Davies’ Song for Joy
Sing Gently is a Covid-tide piece by Eric Whitacre that was written for his Virtual Choir. The message encourages us to “sing together, always” – even when we are inhibited by extraordinary events. For it is our singing that “keeps others aloft” and unites the members of choral communities.
May we sing together, always.
May our voice be soft.
May our singing be music for others and may it keep others aloft.
Sing gently, always.
Sing, sing as one.
May we stand together, always.
May our voice be strong, may we hear the singing and may we always sing along.
Sing gently, as one.
– Eric Whitacre
Shawn Kirchner’s setting of Ca’ the Yowes and Angel Band are both adaptations born in Covid-tide. For the latter, Kirchner condensed his mixed choir setting to be suitable for treble chorus. As we emerged from the pandemic, larger choirs were permitted and our singing communities came back in a serious way. We are celebrating this re-emergence with our combined treble chorus comprised of University Chorus and the sopranos and altos in Concert Choir.
Ca’ the Yowes
Ca’ the yowes to the knowes,
Ca’ them where the heather grows,
Ca’ them where the burnie rowes, my bonie Dearie.
Hark the mavis’ e’ening sang,
Sounding Clouden’s woods amang;
Then a-faulding let us gang, my bonie Dearie.
Fair and lovely as thou art,
Thou hast stown my very heart;
I can die-but canna’ part, my bonie Dearie.
– Scottish Folk; tr. Robert Burns
Angel Band
The latest sun is sinking fast, my race is almost run,
My strongest trials now are past; my triumph is begun.
O come, angel band, come and around me stand,
Bear me away on your snow-white wings to my eternal home.
I’ve almost gained my heavenly home, my spirit loudly sings,
The Holy Ones, behold they come; I hear the noise of wings.
– Jefferson Hascall, adpt. Krichner
Joan Szymko states, “I am drawn to texts that invoke divine grace, speak to the universal yearning for good and that nurture a compassionate heart.”
This sentiment is exhibited in her composition Invincible, featuring an adaptation of a text apocryphally attributed to Albert Camus. She writes:
“Composed during the summer of 2021, under the shadow of a persistent pandemic, devastating climate change events and increasing cultural polarization in the US, I found great solace and encouragement in this text and an emergence of joy within through the creative act of composing.”
Szymko invites us to look past the tribulation of the COVID-era and find within ourselves the power to better the world with invincible love.
Invincible
In the midst of hate, I found there was within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of hate, I found there was within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of hate, I found there was within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that in the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.
Invincible calm, invincible smile – invincible love.
No matter how hard the world pushes against me,
I know there’s something stronger, something better, something there within me pushing back – an invincible summer.
Invincible calm, invincible smile – invincible love.
–anon. and Albert Camus
In Szymko’s setting of a song from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Always Coming Home, we are challenged to be exploring, finding, learning – so frequently that one is always coming home on account of being away from it so often. In doing so, we should “walk carefully, walk mindfully, walk fearlessly, return to us – be always coming home.”
Always Coming Home
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be the maps, and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
May your mouth contain the shape of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, walk mindfully, walk fearlessly,
Return with us, return to us, well-loved one.
Be always coming home.
– Ursula K. Le Guin
James Erb’s setting of Shenandoah has found a beloved place in choral music, featuring warm and lush chord progressions and simple but effective compositional devices. The climax of the piece is a three-part canon in the treble voices that envelops the listener in the well-loved folk tune. While claimed as the anthem of communities near the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, the song is from a place far west of there – the Missouri river valley. Shenandoah was not a place but a person: a Native American chief with a daughter who was the object of desire of fur traders in the region. Regardless, many who sing this tune are reminded of their home, especially while they may be “bound away” from wherever that home may be – a song to sing in the years when you are “always coming home.”
Shenandoah
O Shenandoah, I long to see you…and hear your rolling river, away, we’re bound away, across the wide Missouri.
I long to see your smiling valley…
‘Tis seven long years since last I see you…
– Traditional
Olórun t’ó l’ayò was written by Ayo Oluranti, who was assistant Organist to the late Christopher Ayodele at St. Peter’s Anglican Church (now Cathedral), Aremo, Ibadan, Nigeria. During the assistantship, Oluranti studied Ayodele’s unique and flamboyant style of choral accompaniment and his choral arrangement technique. These influences are found in the three-section arrangement of the Yorùbá sacred song, Olórun t’ó l’ayò (Lord of all joy), written during that period. The song is a sacred adaptation of the folksong, E po nbe, ewa nbe o. The piece introduces the song in full in the upper parts followed by a slight variation of the same in the lower voices. The conclusion is a five-part polyphony in which the supplication to God, for earthly joy, is intensified. The polyphony of the concluding section is informed by the need to keep to the tonality of the Yorùbá language, hence the need for independent lines.
Olórun t’ó l’ayò
Lord of all joy, make us joyful,
Holy King, make us glorious,
Lord of all joy, bless us,
Lord of all joy, make us joyful.
–Sacred Yorùbá Song
Craig Hella Johnson’s The Innocence is taken from his oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard. The piece is one of the introspective and reflective moments in the oratorio, a work which also confronts the ugliest parts of human interaction. One theme that carries through the entire oratorio is the idea of being “the other,” an idea to which The Innocence speaks directly. When we are in our darkest hours, feeling left out or persecuted, sometimes the only love we can find comes from the past – the only home we can find is in our memories.
The Innocence
When I think of all the times the world was ours for dreaming, when I think of all the times the earth seemed like our home,
Every heart alive with its own longing, every future we could ever hope to hold?
All the time our laughter rang in summer, all the times the rivers sang our tune,
Was there already sadness in the sunlight? Some stormy story waiting to be told?
Where, oh where has the innocence gone? Where, oh where has it gone?
Rains, rolling down, wash away my memory. Where, oh where has it gone?
When I think of all the joys the wonders we remember, all the treasures we believed we’d never, ever lose?
Too many days gone by without their meaning, too many darkened hours without their peace.
Where, oh where has the innocence gone? Where, oh where has it gone?
Vows we once swore, now it’s just this letting go, where, oh where has it gone?
– M.D. Browne and C.H. Johnson
Reena Esmail’s The Love of Thousands captures the subtle but important support we all can receive from knowing that all of our presences here, in life, are caused by the love that so many of our ancestors shared. When we are alone, feeling unloved, or away from home, we can always know the universal truth that each of us is the result of the love of thousands. Each of us comes from love. Esmail’s setting of the text evokes the subtle and precise nature of this truth, through pulsing-vibe passages of tarana syllables that can represent this truth resonating with us and augmented harmonies that resolve in a way that alleviates the discomfort of life’s tensions.
The Love of Thousands
Walking, I am listening to a deeper way.
Suddenly, all my ancestors are behind me.
Be still, they say. Watch and listen.
You are the result of the love of thousands.
– Linda Hogan
Shawn Kirchner’s Sweet Rivers features an original, fantastically uplifting tune on words by John Adam Granade. His setting is driven forward with a precisely picked piano accompaniment that is reminiscent of banjo playing (one of Kirchner’s mentors was a banjo player). With this number we circle back to the idea of a celestial home – one that relieves all of our pain, and extracts us from hardship; after all, we all need a home that shows us the love we deserve!
Thank you for going on this musical journey with us, and may you be always coming home.
Sweet Rivers
Sweet rivers of redeeming love lie just before mine eyes; had I the pinions of a dove, I’d to those rivers fly.
I’d rise superior to my pain, with joy outstrip the wind: I’d cross o’er Jordan’s stormy waves and leave the world behind.
A few more days, or years at most, my troubles will be o’er: I hope to join the heavenly host on Canaan’s happy shore.
My rapturous soul shall drink and feast in love’s unbounded sea, the glorious hope of endless rest is ravishing to me.
O come, my Savior, come away and bear me through the sky, nor let thy chariot wheels delay, but quickly draw thou nigh.
Then I shall join the angel throng, and circle round thy throne, I’ll sing through all the ages long and joy to be thine own.
– John Adam Granade, adt. Kirchner
Howard Eckdahl 