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About the Composer

Joan Szymko

Joan Szymko is widely regarded as an outstanding composer of choral music in America today. With a catalog of over 100 choral works in print, her music is sung regularly at choral festivals and competitions across North America and abroad and for nearly two decades has been heard on stage or in sessions at every...

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Joan Szymko Music

Be It Therefore Resolved

Name: Be It Therefore Resolved
SKU: JS-029
Availability: InStock

Joan Szymko

Transforms peace from “abstraction” into living, breathing action.

Choral

mixed choir

1-2 instruments, piano

variable

fall, secular, spring, summer, winter

Difficulty: 3

Duration: less than 3 min.

JS-029

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SATB, piano, violin, and cello

In simple, true words Kim Stafford’s poem transforms peace from “abstraction” into living, breathing action. I was honored when he entrusted me with his words. “Be It Therefore Resolved” was commissioned in 2011 by The Congressional Chorus (Washington D.C.). The poem (and Congressional bills) are written in the form of a resolution. 

Text

Whereas the world is a house on fire;
Whereas the nations are filled with shouting;
Whereas hope seems small, sometimes
a single bird on a wire
left by migration behind.
Whereas kindness is seldom in the news
and peace an abstraction
while war is real;
Whereas my words are all I have;
Whereas my life is short;
Whereas I am afraid;
Whereas I am free—despite all
fire and anger and fear;
Be it therefore resolved a song
shall be my calling—a song
not yet made shall be vocation
and peaceful words the work of my remaining days.

– Kim Stafford

$2.50 per licensed PDF