When David Heard

Music for me is usually a happy thing, overflowing with positive associations and irrepressible effervescence. However, this is not always the case. I would have to say my favorite pieces of music come not from happiness, but from true and overwhelming sadness. My favorite genre of composition has to be the requiem, a mass sung for the dead. And while this doesn't always have to be a maudlin display of grief, there is a resolute sadness to the music (my favorite requiem is probably Faure's, which is probably more a feeling of release than a sigh of bereavement). So when I set to putting the text to "When David Heard" to music, I had a lot up against me. First of all, it's decidedly depressing, with a father mourning the loss of his son. Secondly, there are a bevy of amazing settings of this music (Eric Whitacre's version is hauntingly brilliant, and over 12 minutes in length to boot, which is impressive considering the text is basically 3 lines long) to contend with as well as compare in my mind. Thirdly, I've never felt myself to have a flair for writing in minor keys, my brain seems to like sticking to major tonalities which I feel I do well. So writing this piece was an exercise in expanding my creative boundaries in a number of ways. I feel the effort is solid, and posted it to my Myspace. The texts I overlaid quite a bit to create this effect of echoes, because in my mind I imagined David screaming at the top of his lungs into a large empty room, so all he could hear was his own voice reflecting back to him. He is a man searching for answers at this point, feeling lost and abandoned by his creator, and the only answer he receives is his own voice back at him. The text reads like this:

When David heard that Absalom was slain,
he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept and thus he said:
"O, Absalom! My son! Would God that I had died for thee!"