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Jeffrey Derus
Caribbean Blue Publishing (Jeffrey Derus)
It Singeth Low In Every Heart
A song to remind us of the ones we have lost.
SATB a cappella chorus with divisi
Commissioned by Brandon Elliott and Choral Arts Initiative for a concert centered around sacred music, this piece is a reimagining of the original hymn. Drawing on the sentiment of a song “low in every heart”, the choir opens each verse with a calm and meditative entrance. Throughout the piece you can hear shifts in the emotional soundscape with tense and striking chords portraying the longing for connection with the past and who is “with us no more”. For the sacred and secular programs, this piece offers a moment for inward contemplation about life and what is to come.
“…just elegant”
– The OC Register
Text
It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all,
A song of those who answer not,
However we may call.
They throng the silence of the breast,
We see them as of yore,
The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.
‘Tis hard to take the burden up,
When these have laid it down;
They brightened all the joy of life,
They softened every frown.
But oh, ‘tis good to think of them,
When we are troubled sore;
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Tho’ they are here no more.
More homelike seems the vast unknown,
Since they have entered there;
To follow them were not so hard,
Wherever they may fare.
They cannot be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
What e’er betides, thy love abides,
Our God, for evermore.
Amen.
– John W. Chadwick, 1876
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