Category: SATB accompanied

The World is Charged

Posted on by Karen P. Thomas

SATB, cello

Set to a powerful text by Gerard Manley Hopkins (God’s Grandeur), this world premiere work was commissioned especially for Seattle Pro Musica and Nathan Chan. Blending voices and solo cello, Hopkins’ electrifying poetry is portrayed with excitement and fervor – “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”

Text

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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Panta Rhei – everything flows

Posted on by Karen P. Thomas

SATB, soprano solo, string orchestra

Karen P. Thomas · Panta Rhei

Karen P. Thomas · Panta Rhei

Program Note

The Greek title, Panta rhei, translates as “everything flows”. The texts used in Panta Rhei express the concept of flow and change – beginning with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who famously wrote “no one steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and they are not the same person”. Other texts are taken from the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, and Plato.

Text

Panta rhei Everything flows (Heraclitus)

Kol han’khalim holkhim el hayam v’hayam eynenu

Malay el mikom shehankhalim holkhim sham heym shavim lalakhet.

All rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the rivers flow, there they return again.

                Ecclesiastes 1:7

Yordey hayam ba’oniyot osey m’lakha b’mayim rabim

Heyma ra’u ma’asey Adonai v’nifl’otav bimtzula

Vayomer vaya’ameyd ru’akh s’ara vat’romeym galav

Ya’alu shamayim yeyrdu t’homot nafsham b’ra’a titmogag

Yakhogu v’yanu’u kashikor v’khol khokhmatam titbala

Vayitzaku el Adonai batzar lahem umimtzukoteyhem yotzi’eym

Yakeym s’ara lidmama vayekheshu galeyhem

Those who go down to the sea in ships; who do work in mighty waters.

They saw the works of the Lord, the wonderful deeds in the deep.

God spoke and set up a tempest, and it raised its waves.

They went up to the heavens and came down to the depths; their soul melted with trouble.

They were frightened and staggered like drunkards; and all their wisdom was destroyed.

They cried out to the Lord in their trouble, that he take them out of their straits.

God stilled the storm to a calm; the waves (of the sea) were hushed.

                Psalm 107

Hineyni oseh khadasha ota titzmakh halo

teyda’uha eyf asim bamidbar derekh bishmon n’harot.

Behold, I am making a new thing; now it shall sprout, now you shall know it.

I will make a road in the desert, rivers in the wasteland.

                Isaiah 43:18-19 

nothing remains still

Plato

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