I have begun composing a new Opus (collection of music) that I am entitling “Songs During the Time of a Pandemic.” This song is based on a poem/reflection I wrote as I saw footage of refrigerator trucks bringing many of the unnamed, unknown victims of this deadly virus to mass graves outside New York City. Here is the poem/reflection:
NEVER FORGOTTEN
The pandemic cuts a long swath
through the human population,
bodies gathered and scattered
through emergency rooms,
intensive care units, and
long lines of refrigerator trucks
patiently waiting its human cargo.
So many dead, many unknown,
seemingly forgotten by family and friends,
their funeral, the quiet ride
to a massive pauper’s grave.
Though forgotten by humanity,
not so by the One who loves
and named them at conception.
(c) 2020 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
This prayer song is in the musical form “Variations on a Theme”. The brief melody is played at the beginning, with resulting musical variations on that melody. In this prayer song, the original melody, in the key of D minor, is restated in a Baroque polyphonic variation, followed by a lilting dance, followed by jig, followed by a fugue, followed by a waltz, and then three more variations which get darker in sound before ending in the melody in the key of D major.
I chose Variations on a Theme to reflect all the different people who have been silenced by this plague. There is not one segment of our population that has not been touched by the horror of this virus. Wealth, status, culture, country of origin, age are no protection from this plague. It kills the rich as well as the poor. It kills the white population as readily as it kills those people of color. It kills the good and the bad. It kills the smart and the stupid alike. This virus is an equal opportunity killer of human life, and so, whether one’s origins are European, Black American, Latino, Asian, Native American, all cultures and all nationalities are infected.
While this all sounds grim and somber, and the music is primarily in a minor key area, the music is not depressing but alternates between light dance, agitation, sorrow, light heartedness, then progressively darker in tone before ultimately ending in hope.
