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Mari Esabel Valverde
Mari Esabel Valverde
Prayer of St. Francis
Calls us to respond to inhumanity with humanity habitually as a movement towards peace.
for SATB chorus and piano
The “Prayer of St. Francis” calls us to respond to inhumanity with humanity habitually as a movement towards peace. Opening with a dissonant cry, the singers sing a series of entreaties, and the piano carries them over gently undulating quadruplets. This work would be most appropriate for choirs at an upper-intermediate level.
Composer’s Notes
The prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi calls us to respond to inhumanity with humanity habitually as a movement towards peace. While my output as a composer is predominantly and purposefully secular, after it was introduced to me as a member of the St. Olaf Choir, I came to admire the prayer’s benevolent message. Subsequently, in 2011, I created my choral setting. Two years later, when Dr. Meg Gurtcheff (née Granum) programmed it for her graduate conducting recital, the Emory Mastersingers recorded its première at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts in Atlanta, Georgia.
Like roaring thunder, the “Prayer of St. Francis” strikes the downbeat in a dissonant cry for good will, for which the ensemble must be aurally prepared. The singers sing a series of entreaties, and the piano carries them over gently undulating quadruplets, and as they encounter moments of discord, it bolsters them through entrancing harmonies. Organized in two extended statements, strung together in continuous phrases that evade hasty cadences, the music flows freely. And after great anticipation, the choir sets an anchor in a declaration of gratitude for life, grace, and deliverance.
-Mari Esabel Valverde
Text
Lord, make me an instrument
of your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
And where there is darkness, light.
Oh, divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born
to eternal life.
–“Peace Prayer of St. Francis” (ca. 1200) by Francesco d’Assisi.
$2.00 per licensed PDF
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