Schola Cantorum on Hudson **Rocks**!!!
Feb. 13th, 2003 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
klsiegel320It's looking like this is turning out to be something on the order of a creativity journal...hey, whatever works to get the words moving.
Schola performed last night at the Lincoln Society dinner in Jersey City, and we rocked!!! We did the national anthem to open the ceremonies; for our "entertainment" portion of the evening we did Kirke Mechem's Island in Space as a tribute to the Columbia crew, and a medley of armed services "theme songs" to honor those who have served and are serving.
Island in Space is essentially a Dona nobis (Latin, dona nobis pacem = grant us peace), set around quotations by Russell Schweickart (the first astronaut to make an unattached spacewalk) and Archibald MacLeish (a poet).
Schweickart's observations on seeing the Earth from space are breathtaking...he looks at the Earth and sees not boundaries and borders but the only place in the universe that contains everything that means anything to him: "all history, all poetry, all music, all art," as he says.
MacLeish says that "to see the Earth is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness; brothers who know now they are truly brothers."
And between settings of the words of these quotes, persistent, pleading: Dona nobis pacem. Grant us peace.
It was much easier, singing this (tears for the fallen and all) than singing the rousing rally songs of the services (Anchors A-weigh, etc.). I do honor those who serve...but their loyalty to their country is being perverted, used by the one who commands it to commit an obscenity. It's hard to sing rip-roaring booster songs for the military in such times.
However...
We rocked!!! The Mechem is a 20th century composition (somewhat obviously). It's dissonant; it doesn't have any particular tonal center; the intervals and entrance notes are not obvious or intuitive. And we haven't performed it since June.
We put it together to perform in a half hour of rehearsal Monday evening, plus warm-up last night, and the performance was simply awesome. Our director is running out of words to praise how well we did this...
There's such a joy, such a pleasure, when music comes together that way, when thirty-five individual bodies and souls breathe as one soul, one body. Another definition - for me - of communion.
Schola performed last night at the Lincoln Society dinner in Jersey City, and we rocked!!! We did the national anthem to open the ceremonies; for our "entertainment" portion of the evening we did Kirke Mechem's Island in Space as a tribute to the Columbia crew, and a medley of armed services "theme songs" to honor those who have served and are serving.
Island in Space is essentially a Dona nobis (Latin, dona nobis pacem = grant us peace), set around quotations by Russell Schweickart (the first astronaut to make an unattached spacewalk) and Archibald MacLeish (a poet).
Schweickart's observations on seeing the Earth from space are breathtaking...he looks at the Earth and sees not boundaries and borders but the only place in the universe that contains everything that means anything to him: "all history, all poetry, all music, all art," as he says.
MacLeish says that "to see the Earth is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness; brothers who know now they are truly brothers."
And between settings of the words of these quotes, persistent, pleading: Dona nobis pacem. Grant us peace.
It was much easier, singing this (tears for the fallen and all) than singing the rousing rally songs of the services (Anchors A-weigh, etc.). I do honor those who serve...but their loyalty to their country is being perverted, used by the one who commands it to commit an obscenity. It's hard to sing rip-roaring booster songs for the military in such times.
However...
We rocked!!! The Mechem is a 20th century composition (somewhat obviously). It's dissonant; it doesn't have any particular tonal center; the intervals and entrance notes are not obvious or intuitive. And we haven't performed it since June.
We put it together to perform in a half hour of rehearsal Monday evening, plus warm-up last night, and the performance was simply awesome. Our director is running out of words to praise how well we did this...
There's such a joy, such a pleasure, when music comes together that way, when thirty-five individual bodies and souls breathe as one soul, one body. Another definition - for me - of communion.
