CFAMC Listening Page #6

First issued April 10, 2005

A monthly musical offering by a composer member of the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers.
Both your listening and comments are encouraged.

Scott Robinson

Song of Hannah

Soprano solo

Performed by:
Gypsophilia
Shannon Coulter, soprano

Text

The Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10)

Alatz libee ba'adonai, ramah karnee ba'adonai;
    My heart exults in the LORD; in God I hold my head high.
Rahcav pee aloyevai, keesamahctee beeshuatekah.
    My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory.
Ein kadosh ka'adonai, kee'ein bilteka, ve'ein tzur keloheinu.
    There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.
Altarbu tedabberu gevohah gevohah yeitzei atak mipeekem;
    Do not talk and talk so very proudly, nor let arrogance come from your mouth,
Kee eil deiot adonai velo nitkenu aleelot.
    for the LORD is a God who knows, and his is the weighing of deeds.
Keshet giboreem hcateem, venikshaleem azru hcateem.
    The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.
Seveieem balehcem niskaruh ureiveem hcadeillu.
    Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.
Ad akarah yaldah shivah, verabbat baneem umlalah.
    The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.
Adonai meimeet umhcayeh, moreet sheol vaiya'al,
    The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
Adonai moreesh umasheer meishepeel afmeromeim.
    The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exults.
Meikeem meiafar dol meiashpot yareem; evyon lehosheev imnedeeveem vekissei kavod yanhcileim;
    He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to give them a seat with princes;
Kee la'adonai met zukei eretz, vaiyashet aleihem teiveil.
    For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and on them he has set the world.
Raglei hcaseedav yishmor urshaeem bahcoshek yidammu, keelo vekoahc yigbareesh.
    He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness; for not by might does one prevail.
Adonai yeihcattu mereevov alov bashshamaiyim yareim; adonai yadeen afsei aretz.
    The LORD! His adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven.
Veyittenoz lemalko veyareim keren mesheehco.
    The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed.

Program Notes

I composed “The Song of Hannah” for my group Gypsophilia, who recorded it on our CD Free Inside!. It’s for medium-high voice, violin, cello, and 1 to 3 percussionists. It is in the form of a “karsilamas,” an eastern Mediterranean and Balkan dance in 2+2+2+3 beats—what Bartók called “Bulgarian rhythm.” At one point, the strings and percussion play a series of ostinatos over which the singers sings the text as an unmeasured chant; I adapted this approach from the Sufi practice of “zikr,” in which the devotees chant a repetitive rhythmic formula (such as “there is no God but God”) while the sheikh improvises an unmeasured setting of devotional poetry.

The greatest challenges was how to notate the hand-drum part; eventually, I simply notated all the strokes on a single line, and typed in the syllabic names of the various strokes (“doum”, “ka”, and “tek”) underneath, as though they were lyrics.

Composer's Statement of Faith

In my Music in World Cultures class, I play a recording of an Assyrian Orthodox priest chanting the Liturgy of St. James, then ask my students to speculate on what they are hearing. Usually, they identify the recording as something Islamic. I then quote them a passage from the Hadith (a collection of Islamic sayings) in which God says, “My heaven does not contain me, and my earth does not contain me, but the heart of my believing servant contains me.” The students are usually comfortable with this saying, and ready to ascribe it to the Bible. Through these exercises, I am able to introduce two ideas:

  1. There are many, many ways of being a Christian, and there is a dazzling diversity of Christian worship in the world. What the students identified as an expression of the Islamic religion was actually an expression of Middle East culture, musically speaking; it was not faith-specific. Likewise, we are too quick to assume that Christian worship is inextricably bound up with Western culture.
  2. If discernment leads us to assent to something as a true word of or about God, it probably is, even if it comes from outside the Biblical faith. Though God has revealed Himself most fully in Jesus Christ, and made salvation available through Him alone, He has also led people of other faiths to seek Him, and we can learn something of Him from the ways in which they have spoken if Him. Paul refers to this truth when he speaks to the Athenians about their shrine to the “Unknown God,” “in whom we live an move and have our being.” Augustine recognized this when he appropriated Plato for Christian use. C.S. Lewis wrote that Plato’s murdered “righteous man” so closely resembles the crucified Christ “not because (Plato) was lucky, but because he was wise.” And Clement of Alexandria put it this way: “All, in my opinion, are illuminated by the dawn of Light. Let all, therefore, both Greeks and barbarians, all who have aspired after truth—both those who possess much, and those who have any portion—produce whatever they have of the word of truth.”

Just as the African missionary Bernard Mzecki, rather than trying to suppress Shona ancestor veneration, showed the similarity between it and the Christian Communion of Saints—and just as the Druids of Ireland saw the sacrifice of Jesus as the fulfillment of their own religion of human sacrifice, so may we, rather than rejecting out of hand any cultural or religious thought that flows from non-Christian cultures, dig a new channel for it: a channel that flows into the trans-cultural faith of the Gospels.

I express these aspects of my faith in my music by striving—through the use of rhythms, scale systems and other musical materials—to disentangle the Gospel faith from Western culture, in order to bring balance to our perception of Jesus Christ, in Whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free man, male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28.)

Composer Biography

Scott Robinson grew up in Syracuse, NY, and worked as a professional folk musician from 1986-1994, earning his MMus en route. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, and has divided his time since then between his composing and performing activities and teaching at Eastern University, a Christian institution on Philadelphia’s Main Line. He teaches composition, Music in World Cultures, twentieth-century music history, and a faith-and-the-arts class called Arts Odyssey.

Scott’s prose has appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sojourners magazine and Arts magazine, among others. His music is published by Moon of Hope and Thomas House publishing, and has been recorded on the Wyndfall, Lux Musica and Naxos labels. His chorus-and-strings piece “The Stolen Child” was awarded the Roger Wagner prize in 2000. His work has been broadcast on Public Radio International and Radio Free Europe, as well as on various regional public radio stations. Scott has appeared as guest lecturer at numerous colleges and churches, speaking on arts-and-faith-related topics.

Scott’s group Gypsophilia performs Balkan, Turkish and Jewish folk music, while his group Mandala performs his original Sufi-inspired Christian devotional music.

- - -  SOLI DEO GLORIA!  - - -

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