Three Great Anthems and Texts

Some of my posts on this blog are for the benefit of other choral musicians using a search engine to find a text, a date for a composer, or something else like that. Here are three texts for great anthems to help other church musicians:

And The Father Will Dance
Words Zephaniah 3:14,17, Psalm 34:2,4; Music by Mark Hayes

And the Father will dance over you in joy!
He will take delight in whom He loves
Is that a choir I hear singing the praises of God?
No, the Lord God Himself is exulting over you in song!
And He will joy over you in song.
And He will joy over you in song (Repeat)

My soul will make its boast in God
for He has answered all my cries
His faithfulness in me is as sure as the dawn of a new day.

Awake, my soul! Awake, my soul! Awake, my soul, and sing!
Let my spirit rejoice. Let my spirit rejoice. Let my spirit rejoice in God!

Sing, O daugther of Zion, with all of your heart!
Cast away fear for you have been restored!
Put on the garment of praise as on a festival day
Join with the Father in glorious, jubilant song!

And He will joy over you in song.
And He will joy over you in song
And the Father will dance over you in joy!
He will take delight in whom He loves
Is that a choir I hear singing the praises of God?
No, the Lord God Himself is exulting over you in song!

God rejoices over you.
God rejoices over you.
God rejoices over you in song!

Who At My Door Is Standing?
Arr. K. Lee Scott

Who at my door is standing, there patiently drawing near,
who entrance is demanding? Whose is the voice I hear?
Sweetly the tones are falling: “Now open the door for me!
If thou wilt heed my calling, I will abide with thee.”
Within, the rooms are darken’d, all filled with dust and sin;
how shameful, how unworthy for Christ to enter in.
Yet, the tones are falling: “Now open the door for me!
If thou wilt heed my calling, I will abide with thee.”
Door of my heart, I hasten! Thee will I open wide.
Though he rebuke and chasten, He shall with me abide.
Sweetly the tones are falling: “Now open the door for me!”
Lord God, I hear thee calling, come now, abide with me. Dear Lord, abide with me!

Jesus, Savior, Blessed Friend
Words and Music by Deborah Govenor

Whom have I, O Lord, beside you?
What have I except your love?
Where is home if not for heaven,
there to dwell with you above?

Who are you, if not my Savior?
Who am I if not your own?
What are you if not my shelter,
Christ, my rock and cornerstone?

Jesus, Savior, blessed friend,
I will love you without end.

Who will share my earthly sorrow?
Who will heal my broken heart?
Who will hold my life together
when it seems to fall apart?>

When the fears are far too many,
and the joys are far too few,
who will comfort and defend me?
Only you, Lord only you.

Jesus, Savior, blessed friend,
I will love you without end.

Where, O Lord, when life is over,
can I go, but home to you?
What have I except the promise
where you are I shall be too?

When at last I reach the comfort
of that bright celestial place,
there with joy will I behold you,
gaze upon your glorious face.

Jesus, Savior, blessed friend,
I will love you without end.

Auld Lang Syne

Some call it "Ole Lang Syne" or a number of other titles, but here it is with it's proper title. Happy 2007 everyone. Wikipedia has a great history of the song.

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here's a hand, my trusty friend
And gie's a hand o' thine
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Looking ahead: The Coolin

The Coolin
Music by Samuel Barber
Text: James Stephens (1880-1950)

Come with me, under my coat,
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Or wine if it be thy will

And we will talk, until
Talk is a trouble, too,
Out on the side of the hill;
And nothing is left to do,

But an eye to look into an eye;
And a hand in a hand to slip;
And a sigh to answer a sigh;
And a lip to find out a lip!

What if the night be black!
Or the air on the mountain chill!
Where the goat lies down in her track,
And all but the fern is still!

Stay with me, under my coat!
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Out on the side of the hill!

Fantastic recording on emusic here (Dale Warland Singers: Reincarnations) Itunes link here.
About James Stephens.

The following notes come from this website.

The text of Reincarnations has a double history. James Stephens (1882-1950) was an Irish author writing in English whose output was dominated by nostalgia and melancholy over lost traditional Ireland. Two of these texts are "after the Irish of Raftery," i.e., they are translated and reworked from songs in the Irish language – what we call Gaelic – by the musician/poet Antoine O Reachtabhra, transliterated as Anthony Raftery. Raftery (1784-1835) was among the last of the great blind Irish harpists. Irish culture had a great bardic tradition with no meaningful distinction between song and poetry, and many of the greatest bards were blind. (The traditional self-accompaniment for the bard was the harp.) Harpists wandered from court to court, performing and improvising songs, taking maximum advantage of the elaborate code of aristocratic hospitality. Among the most common genres were songs of praise, the lament, the extended poetic insult, and the vision song. In setting these words to music, Barber restores them to their original purpose, not as poems to be read but as lyrics for song.

Two of the songs in the Reincarnations cycle – "Mary Hynes" and "The Coolin" – fall into the traditional category of love song or praise for a beautiful woman. Note in "Mary Hynes" the repeated use of visual imagery by the blind artist singing of the woman's beauty, and the concluding line "no good sight is good until by great good luck you see the blossom of branches walking towards you, airily, airily." The irony of this line would not have been lost on Raftery's original audience. The second piece is a tribute to Anthony Daly, a martyr hanged in 1820 for leading an agrarian terrorist organization. He was also accused of shooting at another man, a charge he vehemently denied: "If I did, though I have but one eye, I would have hit him." Nonetheless, he was convicted and sent to the gallows. Raftery, who witnessed the hanging, composed a bard's curse on those responsible for the death. Thus the mood is more of retaliation than of mourning, and legend has it that calamity did befall those whom he cursed! Barber makes expressive use of the ancient device of pedal point, with the note E sounded below or above the melody for all but four measures of the piece. The insistence of that pitch and repetition of Anthony's name heightens the impact.

The word coolin, used as the title of the third piece, refers to a lock of hair or "curleen" that grew on a young girl's neck and came to be used as a term for one's sweetheart. Stephens wrote: "I sought to represent that state which is almost entirely a condition of dream wherein the passion of love has almost overreached itself and is sinking into a motionless languor." Barber uses a gentle siciliano rhythm for this old Irish love song, filtered through Stephens's romantic poetry.‡

MLK: If I Can Help Somebody

2011 UPDATE:  This is a post I made six years ago - and although I no longer work at UAB I still remember the choir that sang this marvelous arrangement by the great Ray Liebau.  You can now purchase the piece here on Mr. Liebau's website and listen to it on YouTube - but not by the Ole Miss Concert Singers - but by the Raffles Chorale, conducted by Mr Toh Ban Sheng in 2008 at the World Youth Choral Festival in Singapore.

In my happiest year as an instructor at the University of Mississippi, the choir sang a song arranged by Ray Liebau called "If I Can Help Somebody." The words were from a hymn quoted in one of the last speeches Martin Luther King ever gave.

We honor the great Martin Luther King today. Below is a portion of the speech he gave that night, with the hymn quoted in its context. There is a link to an Ole Miss recording of the arrangement, but it is rather large, so be forwarned.

If I Can Help Somebody (source of the sermon)

The words of Dr. King:

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 February 1968. MLKEC.

French Translation

Choir,

I'm not sure I ever shared this with you . . . it is the translation to the French piece we are doing by Cosma, courtesy of Lauren Askew on November 11, 2004 (and some English-French translation software):

Let me breathe a long time, the fragrance of your hair, plunge there all my face like a man impaired in the water of a spring and to stir (or agitate) them with my hand like a sweet-smelling hankerchief, to shake memories from the air.

My love travels on the perfume like the love of the other men on the music. In the ocean of your hair i see a port swarming with songs, melancholic, vigorous men of all nations and ships of all forms of cutting. Their fine architectures and complicate on an immense sky or wearies the eternal heat.

In the burning hearth of your hair, I breathe the odor of tobacco, mixed, has opium with sugar. In the night of your hair, I see shining the infinite trpical blues. On the shores of the sleeping bag of your hair, I get drunk on the combined odors of tar, musk and coconut oil.

Let me bite your heavy and black braids a long time. when I bite your elastic and rebellious braids. It seems to me that I eat memories.

I'm sure we'll unpack and clarify this into something coherent.

For now, just get a sense of it.

Richte mich Gott (Mendelssohn)

Choir,

There are links to several MP3 files on the MUP 220 page of my website.

My advice: Learn this German quickly. Two of the files are the spoken text and one is sung.

If you want to use a great program to help you learn quickly, download a program I use called WavePad. The program allows you to see the actual sound file and there are features that allow you to rewind quickly and repeat sections as much as you want.

If you are smart, you will be able to figure out how I inserted space (silence) into the original soundfile. If you click here, the file will immediately download. And the best thing about it? It's free.