Two piano song/prayers for the 50 Muslim immigrants slaughtered as they prayed in their Mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, by a Christian, White Supremacist
In 2017, I composed a set of piano songs/prayers in a collection of music entitled, Psalm Offering Opus 7, Music for a Broken World. Each song was a prayer offered up for a specific cause or group of people.
The 8th Psalm offering in this collection was offered up for those suffering religious persecution. This is what I wrote as the commentary for this song.
Your prophets provided you visions of whitewashed illusion; They did not lay bare your guilt, in order to restore your fortunes; They saw for you only oracles of empty deceit. (Lamentations 2:14)
Back in 1965, Tom Lehrer wrote the song “National Brotherhood Week.” One stanza of the song was, “Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews.” © 1965, by Tom Lehrer. This simple lyric of Tom Lehrer’s sums up the persecution that world religions have inflicted upon one another in the name of God. It matters not which religion is persecuting another religion, we slaughter one another in the name of God. We all like to think that God is on our side in our religious vendettas against one another. As President Abraham Lincoln pointed out, it’s not a question of whether God is on our side. The real question is whether we are on God’s side. Religious persecution is an abomination to God.
This music is composed in the key of B Locrian mode. It is written in Sonata Allegro form. The meter of the A melody is in ¾ time. The Locrian mode is perhaps the oddest sounding mode of all the Greek modes. It is almost a diminished scale.
This second song, A Threnody for the Victims of Gun Violence, Psalm Offering 3 Opus 9, I began to compose on February 14, 2018 when reports started coming in about the slaughter of high school students at Parkland High School in Florida.
Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. (1 John 3: 14b-16)
But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them. In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever. Those who trust in him will understand truth and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect. But the ungodly will be punished as their reasoning deserves, those who disregarded the righteous and rebelled against the Lord; for those who despise wisdom and instruction are miserable. Their hope is vain, their labors are unprofitable, and their works are useless. (Wisdom 3:1-9)
A threnody is a song of lament. I began composing this music on February 15, 2018, the day after the horrific slaughter of students at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It is meant to be a prayer of lamentation for the many men, women, and children who have been massacred by assault weapons in the United States. The little to no response from the manufacturers of those weapons or the NRA other than to arm more people with the same weapons make these groups complicit in the murders of these innocent people.
Three images were prominent in my mind as I composed this music. The first image is that of the many feet walking in cemeteries, over these many years of gun violence, to bring their dead loved ones to be buried. The countless children from the wee ones to college students, girlfriends and boyfriends, fiancés, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers indiscriminately slaughtered at school, universities, movie theaters, shopping malls, places of businesses, even Fort Hood.
The second image is that of the relentless chaos of the shooting. People scattering everywhere to escape the hail of bullets, bodies slaughtered left and right by the gunfire. The look of disbelief and horror on the faces of the dead, the dying, and the wounded as they lie where they have been slaughtered.
The third image is that of the victims’ loved ones visiting the graves of those they lost. The utter senselessness of their deaths. The cutting off of their lives before they could even begin to live.
The fourth image is that of the heavenly peace of the victims, held in the loving arms of the God who created them.
These images created the form of this music, namely: ABAC.
