Word: psalm
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When Kit resolves never again to write poetry, one might thank her. Her prize-winning poem, “May,” echoes Psalm 24: “Now lift up your heads oh you Gateses and Flynns.” Given the comic effect, it is difficult to believe (as we are told) that President Kennedy himself honored her for this poem, or even that it was published in an anthology with such a banal title as “Wings of Song...
...Saturday, March 9, the warm glow of the interior of the First Church Congregational was intensified with a superb performance by the Musica Sacra choir. Included among the diverse pieces performed was a choral adaptation of Psalm 23 composed by famed Harvard Professor of Mathematics Noam D. Elkies. Elkies, a campus personality remarkable for the winning combination of his youth and achievements, sat quietly in the second row throughout the performance of his composition, standing only for a few unassuming seconds afterwards to offer the audience a short wave, a little kiss and an understated...
...these professional performances was the companion piece to Psalm 23, Psalm 90, performed in 1988 and now published by Broude. The texts of both psalms deal with the theme of life after death. Elkies chose to write these pieces after being asked to perform the perfect poetry of Psalm 90 to a rather bland early American musical setting, which he found did not do justice to the verse. While Elkies stresses that for him creating music is more like composing poetry than making quantitative discoveries in mathematics, he admits that his type of composing has “a mathematical...
...connection of math to poetry manifests itself in the effortless way Elkies weaves the theme of the text and the themes of the music together in Psalm 23. At times soft and ethereal, light and melodic, the music then gathers to a roar. The male voices sing the words of the text while the female voices rise in pitch to a height sufficient to portray the magnanimity of divine presence. Elkies’ piece was incredibly moving...
...title of this memorable performance was “20th Century Psalm Settings for Chorus.” Within that program Elkies was nestled among composers as diverse as Charles Ives and Ralph Vaughan Williams, in a program that presented a cross-section of great composers of the 20th century. Elkies was very much deserving of the company...