NEC Preparatory School National Youth Choral Festival: Alway Something Sings

Victor Paranjoti | Dravidian Dithyramb

Notable for its use of typical Indian melodic motifs, this work for wordless double choir demands the highest precision of rhythm, and a wide range of tonal and dynamic values.  The Dravidian Dithyramb is an expression of uninhibited festivity.  An elusive but persistent pulse motivates this music, which is based on mere fragments of melody – the pulse driving onward faster and faster toward the final frenzied utterance.                                                                          
– Victor Paranjoti

Victor Paranjoti had a profound knowledge of Indian and Western classical music as well as folk music.  He was known for his role in promoting choral music in India in the middle of the 20th century. He was a music critic for The Times of India, a painter, and Deputy Director General of All-India Radio. 

Heinrich von Herzogenberg | Siehe, um Trost war mir sehr bange

Text

Vittoria Aleotti | Hor che la vaga Aurora

Vittoria Aleotti was one of five daughters of Giovanni Battista Aleotti, architect to Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.  Her genius at the keyboard was discovered when she was five, and when she was seven her teacher suggested that she be placed in the Augustinian convent of San Vito, renowned for its excellence in music.  She became a nun at age fourteen.
        Hor che la vaga Aurora is from Vittoria Aleotti’s collection of madrigals, Ghirlanda de madrigali a quarto voci published in 1593.

Dan Forrest | Alway Something Sings

Text

Alway Something Sings

Let me go where’er I will,
I hear a skyborn music still:
It sounds from all things old,
it sounds from all things young,
From all that’s fair, from all that’s foul,
alway something sings.

It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird,
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard.
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.

‘Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flow’rs,
Nor in the robin’s mellow tone
Nor in the bow that smile in show’rs,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Music”

African American Spiritual (arr. Kyle Pederson) | Soon We Will Be Done

This re-imagining of the iconic African American spiritual is a call to work together to bring an end to racism, sexism, and other injustices that threaten the dignity and worth inherent in all people.  New text and spoken-word soloists invite us to consider a world in which the qualities typically associated with heaven are actively sought here on earth—as we imagine and dare to proclaim, “Soon we will be done with the troubles of the world.”                                                                       
– Kyle Pederson

Text

Done with hatred and done with war;
come lift the lonely, come lift up the poor.

Soon we will be done with the troubles of the world
when heaven comes to earth.
No more weepin’ and wailin’
when heaven comes to earth.

Done
with the racism, and sexism, and all the isms and prisons that bind us,
that blind us from the hurt of another.

I want to be done,
with addiction, with any affliction that takes hold and won’t let go,
and speaks in lies and fiction.

I want to be done,
with the things that divide us instead of unite us,
like the walls we build, the hate instilled,
we fill with judgment inside us.

I want to be done,
done with the violence, and the silence when facing injustice,
but I wonder if you’d trust us if love was our compass.

SOON, when we come together, when
WE stand up for each other, we
WILL offer these hands and feet and
BE love, compassion and grace; come heaven to earth, Oh, Thy (we) will be
DONE.

African American spiritual, adapted and with additional words by Kyle Pederson