God(love) Songs: i am a little church

Well, the cycle is now up to 5 songs, the latest is the longest and most repetitive. I wanted it to sound a bit like church bells in the background and hymn-like singing, so I made some very conscious efforts to make it sound the way I'd imagine a church would sound. The harp/piano has this very bell-like tolling in the bass lines, with higher bells sounds in the right hand. I know this makes me a huge nerd, but I loved the effect it made when I started writing it. The vocal line rolls and lilts like an Irish hymn, and i tried to weave it through the piano part, so the whole thing feels intertwined. When I imagine the poem in my head, I imagine this tiny little chapel in the woods, surrounded by the trees and greenery of the countryside, singing with all its might so that anyone could hear its song. Spirituality is a very personal thing to me (which is why I tend to shy away from congregational religions, and also trying to impart my beliefs on others, I think everyone needs to find their own way to God) and I think Mr. Cummings felt the same way. The lyrics are as follows:



i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

*around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:*
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

*these two lines omitted

I really love the last stanza, which reminds me of the ancient Tao Te Ching. By accepting everything in life as part of a greater plan, we realize that everything in life is interconnected. Without darkness light doesn not seem as bright. Without pain and suffering happiness would be dull. And without the blackness of space the stars would not be so brilliant.

Ave Maria: Two Perspectives

So I posted two versions of the same prayer to my myspace page. The Ave Maria is one of my favorite pieces to set, because it lends itself so well to beautiful and simple arrangements. The Latin text is full of very poetic words, ones that just overflow with text-painting potential. So really, I write Ave Maria after Ave Maria, just with different inflections in each, I keep digging and find more and more potential sounds in the words. The words have an ebb and flow that make the music bloom and recede.

Ave Maria, gratia plena
Dominus tecum
Benedictatu in mulieribus
et benedictus fructus ventris tuis Jesum
Sancta Maria, mater Dei
ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen

In the text, you also have a distinct beginning, middle and end. That helps the composer to plot out the general dynamic feel beforehand. All around, a beautiful text to set.