Music Notes – Sunday, March 1st:
This Sunday’s musicians are The Treble Ensemble and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney
Centering Music: The Earth Prelude – Einaudi
Ludovico Einaudi (b. 1955) is an Italian pianist and composer. He is a graduate of the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, and although he has written works in wide-ranging styles, Einaudi is best known for his neoclassical piano compositions. Einaudi wrote “The Earth Prelude” in 2004 to accompany a short environmental film.
Song: We Would Be One – Sibelius/Wright
This Sunday’s opening hymn will be #318 “We Would Be One”, one of two hymns in Singing the Living Tradition built around the Finlandia melody, borrowed from a 1900 tone poem of the same name by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). The words you’ll be singing this Sunday were written by Unitarian minister Samuel Anthony Wright (1919-2016) for Unitarian and Universalist youth at their Continental Convention of 1953-54. Matching the sentiment of the hymn, that event resulted in the youth of our two parent faiths merging to become the Liberal Religious Youth of the United States and Canada, nearly 10 years before the official creation of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961.
Special Music: There Are Numerous String in Your Lute – Tagore, arr. Carney
Winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was an Indian poet, author, philosopher, activist and artist. Tagore was also an accomplished composer who wrote more than two thousand songs, including two which are now used as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. His poem and accompanying melody for “There Are Numerous Strings in Your Lute” were first published in 1917 and the song appears as #197 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnbook.
Offertory: Daoona Nayeesh – Warmbrand/Badri
#1032 in Singing the Journey, “Daoona Nayeesh” is the inspiration of a Muslim residing in the United States, Samir Badri (b. 1952). Samir recruited Jewish composer Ted Warmbrand (b. 1943) to set his words to a tune, after they were both featured at a Peace rally in Arizona before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and then Iraq. The song is structured musically to allow for people who have never sung in Arabic to do so, in echo fashion. It was first sung with a rippling banjo accompaniment, then a cappella, then with percussion, and then with a band made up of musicians from Morocco and Saudi Arabia who formed to play for the Tucson Jewish Muslim Peace Walk of 2004. (from uua.org)
Translated from Arabic, Badri’s words are as follows:
Let us live in peace. Let us live in inner peace. Let us weave our dreams together. Let us die in peace.
Song: Come and Go with Me – Spiritual
“Come and Go with Me” (also known as “Go with Me to that Land”) originated as a Black American Spiritual. The song features call-and-response singing and lyrics expressing the hope of a better world to come, and has been recorded by many artists, including Bernice Johnson Reagon, Blind Willie Johnson, and Peter, Paul and Mary. “Come and Go with Me” is also #1018 in our Singing the Journey hymnbook, arranged by Kenny Smith (b. 1965).
Postlude: We Will Sing – Stone
“We Will Sing” is a 2017 composition by singer/songwriter/educator Penny Stone, and it was first sung by the Protest in Harmony choir in Scotland in response to the US elections of 2016. In the composer’s own words: [This song] “celebrates and encourages the millions of ordinary people working against…poisonous rhetoric and instead reaching out to work together to create a more just world.” “We Will Sing” is part of the Justice Choir Songbook, an online collection of music that is free to use and perform.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director