NC State Choral Artists: PERSISTENCE

The composer acknowledges in her notes in the score the work of Resmaa Menakem and his book “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” and the impact his teaching has had on this music.

1. URGENCY
   Noted in the score:
   An interviewer asked Stravinsky “who created music” and he said, “I am sure that when we read about the creation of the world, it was created just a big drum and cymbals and music.”

In the beginning
there was the sound of cymbals crashing.
And in the end all things will drift away
just as a noise disappears into silence.
While here in the between time you are in a rush.
How is it that it came to be?
How is it that you are able to imagine
before and after time?
How is it to slow down time
and wander and wonder out under the sky.

2. TONE-POLICING

Silence not Holy Black Madonna
Mother of All
Offer sacred praise to her
If not, thy tongue should silence give
Holy tone she is
Wholly listen in

3. RESOLVE

I wish you great joy in the perpetual discomfort,
in the shifting of the paradigm.
There will be no ease for a while.
What is your question?
Be not discouraged, do not fall into numbness.
Resolve to increase your discomfort,
and thus attain a calm body.
Be curious of one another.
Scribe the shared truths of history.
Reap the reward, truth.
Do not abandon high ideals.
Do not run to distraction.
Do not run from your discomfort.
Be curious.
Return to your commitments.
Increase your discomfort to find your joy,
and live humbly under the sun.

Sacred Place is an ecological service that connects the old with the new, the sacred with the secular, and the individual with their community. The outline of the work is a Jewish service. However, rather than Jewish prayers, the text is made up of various writers and thinkers who speak of the environment as a place of safety, comfort, and beauty. Written for SATB choir, piano, violin, and cello, the six-movement piece is at times a meditation and at times an impassioned prayer for the world we inhabit and share.

1. OPENING PRAYER
   Text by Wendell Berry (b. 1934), from “The Porch Over the River”

In the dusk of the river, the wind
gone, the leaves grow still—
The beautiful poise of lightness,
The heavy world pushing toward it.

2. AMIDAH
   Text by John Muir (1838-1914), written to Teddy Roosevelt on preserving Yosemite National Park

“How softly these mountain rocks are adorned, and how fine and reassuring the company they keep – their brows in the sky, their feet set in groves and gay emerald meadows, a thousand flowers leaning confidingly against their adamantine bosses, while birds bees butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music – things frail and fleeting and types of permanence meeting here and blending as if into this glorious mountain temple Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, whether great or small to draw her lovers into close confiding communion with her.”

2. SHEMA
   Text by William Stafford (1914-1993)

The earth says have a place, be what that place
requires; hear the sound the birds imply
and see as deep as ridges go behind
each other.

The earth says every summer have a ranch
that’s minimum: one tree, one well, a landscape
that proclaims a universe – sermon
of the hills, hallelujah mountain,
highway guided by the way the world is tilted,
reduplication of mirage, flat evening:
a kind of ritual for the wavering.

The earth says where you live wear the kind
of color that your life is
and by listening with the same bowed head that sings
draw all things into one song, join
the sparrow on the lawn, and row that easy
way, the rage without met by the wings
within that guide you anywhere the wind blows.

Listening, I think that’s what the earth says.

2. MI SHEBEIRACH
   Text is a traditional Jewish prayer

May the source of strength
Who blessed the ones before us
Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing
And let us say Amen
Bless those in need of healing with r’fuah sh’leimah*
The renewal of body, the renewal of spirit
And let us say Amen

*a complete healing

2. KADDISH
   Text by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

2. CLOSING PRAYER
   Text by Wendell Berry (b. 1934), from “The Porch Over the River”

In the dusk of the river, the wind
gone, the leaves grow still—
The beautiful poise of lightness,
The heavy world pushing toward it.

So far away
when all will shine
and all will play
hey.

The stars will open up and all will be
tiny pieces of galaxy,
reflected in you and me…

Cells, planets, same thing…

Bright electric lights on all the leaves,
and everything growing from a tree,
water’s blood, and roots are veins.

I don’t know you but I like you,
I don’t know you but I miss you,
I don’t know you but I need you…

The smallest is the biggest thing
and in all the world the love
is the love from me to you…