PROLOGUE: THE FIRST WORD

Language emerges. A spark. A breath. The human voice begins to shape the world.

Setting a poem by Syrian writer Nizar Qabbani, this bold opening is a celebration of language as resistance, intimacy, and selfhood. Qabbani’s text exalts the power of speech to both seduce and subvert — to “conquer the world with words.” Woody’s setting electrifies the text with pulsing rhythms and pointed clarity, launching the program with a breath that is anything but passive: the first word as spark.

  • I conquer the world with words, conquer the mother tongue, verbs, nouns, syntax. I sweep away the beginning of things and with a new language that has the music of water the message of fire I light the coming age and stop time in your eyes and wipe away the line that separates time from this single moment.

    –Text: Nizar Qabbani, Syria

PART I: STILLNESS & LIGHT

The voice quiets. In sacred stillness, sound hovers — a shimmer between earth and heaven.

This set traces breath as invocation, atmosphere, and illusion. Rheinberger’s Kyrie, drawn from his late Romantic Mass in E-flat, gently suspends each phrase in reverent arches of sound — an opening inhale. From there, Thorvaldsdóttir’s ethereal Icelandic prayer lingers at the edge of silence, weaving whispers and close harmony into a meditative stillness. Elgar’s impressionistic setting of Tennyson floats on harmonic ambiguity, dividing the choir across two tonal centers in a sonic sleight of hand that feels like breath exhaled into dream.

  • Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

    Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

  • Heyr þú oss himnum á, heyr oss Guð, hýr vor faðir, börn þín smá,
    Lukku oss þar til ljá líf eilíft þér erfum hjá, Og að þér aldrei flæmumst frá.
    Þitt ríki þróist hér Það þín stjórn og kristni er,
    Svo að menn sem flestir safnist Guð til handa þér,
    Fegnir yfir því fögnum vér.
    Síst skarta sönglist má, sé þar ekki elskan hjá.
    Syngjum því lof þá, þér himnum á  maður rétt kristinn mun þess gá,
    En þegar aumir vér öndumst burt úr heimi hér.
    Oss tak þá Guð að þér, þá dýrð sem aldrei þver
    Amen, amen, það eflaust sker.

    Hear us in heaven, O God above, Father of mercy, gentle and near,
    Shelter your children in eternal love.
    Let your kingdom bloom in this land,
    Your reign of peace, your guiding hand.
    Gather the many with joy anew—we sing,
    but love must carry us through.
    Let praises rise to heaven’s height, the faithful know this holy light,
    Though we depart in mortal night.
    Then take us home beyond the skies, to glory where no shadow lies.
    Amen, amen—let this hope rise.

    –Text: Ólafur á Söndum, Iceland

  • There is sweet music here that softer falls
    than petals from blown roses on the grass,
    or night-dews on still waters between walls
    of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass.

    Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
    than tir’d eyelids upon tirèd eyes;
    Music that brings sweet sleep
    down from the blissful skies.

    Here are cool mosses deep,
    and thro’ the moss the ivies creep,
    and in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
    and from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

    –Text: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, United Kingdom

PART II: REST

At last, breath is spent. The Requiem does not mourn; it floats — tender, luminous, unresolved.

Written in private grief and unpublished during the composer’s lifetime, Herbert Howells’s Requiem is one of the most tender and transcendent choral works of the 20th century. Alternating between Latin liturgical texts and English psalms, the piece avoids the drama of judgment or despair, instead offering luminous harmonies, suspended cadences, and slow arcs of radiant beauty. It is not a work of mourning but of release — a soft, luminous breath at the end of life that neither clings nor collapses, but floats free.

HErBERT HOWELLS: REQUIEM (1932)

  • O saviour of the world, who by thy cross and thy precious blood has redeemed us,
    save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.

  • Caroline LeGrand, soprano; Sandy Sharis, alto; Erik Gustafson, tenor

    The Lord is my shepherd: therefore can I lack nothing.
    He shall feed me in a green pasture: and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
    He shall convert my soul: and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake.
    Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
    Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me:
    Thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.
    But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

  • Requiem aeternam dona eis.
    Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
    Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

    Rest eternal grant unto them.
    And may light perpetual shine upon them.
    Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord.

  • John Arnold, bass; Daniel Emerson Shafer, tenor

    I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help.
    My help cometh even from the Lord:  who hath made heaven and earth.
    He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: and he that keepeth thee will not sleep.
    Behold, he that keepeth Israel: shall neither slumber nor sleep.
    The Lord himself is thy keeper: he is thy defence upon thy right hand.
    So that the sun shall not burn thee by day: neither the moon by night.
    The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
    The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in: from this time forth and for evermore.
    I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help.

  • Requiem aeternam dona eis.
    Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
    Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

    Rest eternal grant unto them.
    And may light perpetual shine upon them.
    Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord.

  • Cory Klose, tenor; Michael Grassi-Dauterman, bass; Sara MacKimmie, soprano

    I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me,
    Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord:
    even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.

PART III: what the soul sees

Visions rise. Memory shimmers. The spirit ignites into motion and takes flight.

Now begins the ascent. Balfour’s Vision Chant pulses with grounded spirituality, layering chant-like motives in a trance-like invocation that evokes Indigenous worldview and sacred presence. McGlynn’s setting of an Irish folk lyric mourns a love that disappears like a vision, the modal harmonies and lilted phrasing echoing memory and mirage. With explosive joy and momentum, Stacey Gibbs’s setting of Ezekiel Saw de Wheel spins that vision into motion — a prophetic glimpse “way up in the middle of the air,” crackling with rhythmic and spiritual fire.

  • Hey-hyah, Hey-hyah
    Babamadizwin
    Windigo
    Misho mis, Nokomis,
    Windigo
    Hey-hyah, Hey-hyah

    –Text: Indigenous Ojibway Chant, Canada

  • Sylvia Ware, soprano

    I once had a true love and I loved her so well, I loved her far better than my tongue can tell.
    And I thought that she whispered to me and did say “it will not be long, love, ‘til our wedding day.”

    I dreamt last night that my true love came in, so softly she entered that her feet made no din.
    And I watched as she whispered to me and did say “it will not be long, love, ‘til our wedding day.”

    If I were an eagle and I had wings to fly, I would fly to my love’s castle and it’s there I would lie.
    On a bed of green ivy I would lay myself down, And with my two fond wings I would my love surround.

    I once had a true love and I loved her so well, I loved her far better than my tongue can tell.
    And I thought that she whispered to me and did say, “it will not be long, love, ‘til our wedding day.”

    –Text: Padraic Colum, Ireland

  • Way up, way up, yes, way in de middle of de air,
    Ezekiel saw de wheel way up in de middle of de air.

    Yes, don’t you know dat de little wheel run by da grace of God,
    Yes, in de middle of de wheel, in de middle of the air.

    You better mind, my brother, how you walk on de cross,
    Your foot might slip and your soul get lost.

    Don’t you know Satan wears a club-fit shoe?
    Watch, if you don’t mind, He’ll slip it on you.

    Some go to church for to sing and shout,
    Some go to church before six months dey’s all turned out.

    He saw de wheel, he saw de wheel a turning,
    He saw de wheel way in de middle of de air.

    Turning, it was a turning, yes Lord,
    It was a turning in de middle of de air.

    –Text: Traditional African-American Spiritual

EPILOGUE: the journey home

A simple melody calls across the water. The voice fades — but never disappears.

With Gerre Hancock’s expansive and reverent setting of Deep River, the program concludes in simplicity and yearning. The spiritual’s central metaphor — crossing over the Jordan to a place of peace — resounds here not just as a vision of the afterlife but as a longing for wholeness and belonging. Gently rooted in tradition and expansive in its reach, this final piece is a quiet homecoming, a song that continues even after the voice has gone still.

  • Deep river, my home is over Jordan.
    Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
    Oh, don’t you want to go to the Gospel feast;
    That Promised Land, where all is peace?
    Deep river, my home is over Jordan.
    Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

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