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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

This We Know

Name: This We Know
SKU: JS-065
Availability: InStock

Joan Szymko

An environmental plea for careful stewardship of the earth

Choral

treble choir

1-2 instruments

fall, secular, spring, summer, winter

Difficulty: 3

Duration: 5-10 min.

JS-065

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SSAA, ob, vc

Cello and oboe are beautifully interwoven with women’s voices in this poignant setting of an excerpt from the speech widely, if erroneously attributed to Chief Seattle. The text, by Ted Perry, speech has been widely used as an environmental plea for careful stewardship of the earth.

Text

This we know, the earth does not belong to us.
 We belong to the earth.
 All things are connected
 Like the blood that unites one family.
 Whatever befalls the earth,
 befalls the children of the earth.
 We did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.
 Whatever befalls the the earth befalls the children of the earth.
 Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

– by Chief Seattle (Ted Perry)

$2.50 per licensed PDF