Music!

Someone left me and a few of the other girls on 3rd Brown some roses last night. We now have pretty floating roses in our rooms...how great is that! After some sharp investigative work I think I know who it was--and who else would it be? Thanks to this person even if they probably don't even read this blog. :)

Just a word on the choir concert Saturday night--great! It was a lot of fun. I want to mention two of the pieces we sang Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb and Vernon Williams' Requiem. Rejoice in the Lamb is an interesting piece with text from Chistopher Smart who was mentally insane. If you read the text for this piece or hear the piece sung without the knowledge of his state of mind, it perhaps is too strange to appreciate. I was a bit resistant to the song until leaning that he wrote the text in an insane assylum. It really is a great piece because as much as it is "weird" it is brillent.


Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues;
Give the glory to the Lord,
And the Lamb.
Nations, and languages,
And every Creature
In which is the breath of Life.
Let man and beast appear before him,
And magnify his name together.


The beginning of the song claims that every part of creation--no matter what it is, from humans to animals to letters on the page--every part of creation glorifies God.

My favorite part of the song though is


For I am under the same accusation
With my Savior,
For they said,
He is besides himself.
For the officers of the peace
Are at variance with me,
And the watchman smites me
With his staff.
For the silly fellow, silly fellow,
Is against me,
And belongeth neither to me
Nor to my family.
For I am in twelve hardships,
But he that was born of a virgin
Shall deliver me out of all,
Shall deliver me out of all.


Fun to sing, humorous slightly with the organ raging loud and singing "silly fellow!" while wishing Katie, Kara, and Jenn were around so we could all appreciate that together, and yet incrediably solemn. Amazing.

And Requiem by Vernon Williams who is the organist/choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Moorestown, New Jersey attended our concert to hear us sing selections from the piece. I think the general consensus is that we should learn the rest of the piece because it is beautiful.

Apparently they make copies of the concerts and make them avaiable to people so I look forward to getting myself a copy--perhaps my TX friends would like to hear the choir, and my family as well...

And to wrap up this post on music.... The Ha!Man came to play cello here at PTS yesterday during lunch. He is from South Africa and a major part of his music is the theme of reconciliation. He uses classical as well as modern influences in his songs as a the background to his music and them plays spontaniously on his cello. He also spontaniously played the piano, had someone improve on the piano while he played cello, him play the paino along with a student who never played cello before on the cello, and danced for us without any music. Oh yes, my friends, this was the place to be during lunch yesterday. Where were you?