Flight Song - SoundCloud

Dear Choir:

Well, another Wednesday night without choir rehearsal, and I miss seeing everybody, I miss singing together, I miss hearing our music.  In the mail today came this inspiration from Alice Parker, now in her nineties, and one of the great names in choral music.  It sums up the value of what we do, gives meaning to our being together in spirit, and our looking forward to being together as a choir again.  The same thoughts are sung in "Flight Song" by Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen, available through the attached link.

Stay well.  Looking forward to being together with you and singing together,
 
     Allan

https://soundcloud.com/kim-arnesen-composer/flight-song-the-st-olaf-choir-live

Here is Alice Parker's message (and the text of Arnesen's anthem):

"The sobering reality is that just when we need to work together, we can't be together. Social distancing and quarantines mean that we can't affirm our human ties by meeting together in groups large and small. From my point of view, there's the incalculable loss of being able to SING together - that unique way of affirming each individual voice as we create not only community, but beauty.   So we must learn to think differently. What can I do, right here, today, to preserve this world? I can affirm that one day this will be over, and that there will be a world in which my great-grandchildren can live and love. I can show kindness to myself and to everyone I meet. I can try to get through this day with no angry words or acts. I can realize that others are facing far severer challenges than mine, and help them however I can. It seems so litte - but if each one of us lived this way, the world would be changed.   Where is the answer? It is where it always was, deep within us. Can we find the quiet place inside where we put our own souls in order? Can we remember that we are part of this same world in which Spring is returning to our Northern climes? Can we sing by ourselves, in our family groups, or on our balconies, to gladden our hearts and 'keep the dark away'?   I think we can. After all, there are those babies being born all over the world. I think we must."   Alice Parker, "Working Together While Living Apart" (Excerpted and used with permission)

 

"Flight Song" by Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen [2] Flight Song Text: Euan Tait (b. 1968) All we are, we have found in song: you have drawn this song from us. Songs of lives unfolding fly overhead, cry overhead: longing, rising from the song within. Moving like the rise and fall of wings, hands that shape our calling voice on the edge of answers you've heard our cry, you've known our cry: music's fierce compassion flows from you. The night is restless with the sounds we hear, is broken, shaken by the cries of pain: for this is music's inner voice, saying, yes, we hear you, all you who cry aloud, and we will fly, answering you: so our lives sing, sing, wild we will fly, wild in spirit we will fly. Like a feather falling from the wing, fragile as a human voice, afraid, uncertain, alive to love, we sing as love, afraid, uncertain, yet our flight begins as song.