SKU: PR.312419260

ISBN 9781491137901. UPC: 680160692590.

Terra Nostra focuses on the relationship between our planet and mankind, how this relationship has shifted over time, and how we can re-establish a harmonious balance. The oratorio is divided into three parts:Part I: Creation of the World celebrates the birth and beauty of our planet. The oratorio begins with creation myths from India, North America, and Egypt that are integrated into the opening lines of Genesis from the Old Testament. The music surges forth from these creation stories into “God’s World” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which describes the world in exuberant and vivid detail. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “On thine own child” praises Mother Earth for her role bringing forth all life, while Walt Whitman sings a love song to the planet in “Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!” Part I ends with “A Blade of Grass” in which Whitman muses how our planet has been spinning in the heavens for a very long time.Part II: The Rise of Humanity examines the achievements of mankind, particularly since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” sets an auspicious tone that mankind is on the verge of great discoveries. This is followed in short order by Charles Mackay’s “Railways 1846,” William Ernest Henley’s “A Song of Speed,” and John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s “High Flight,” each of which celebrates a new milestone in technological achievement. In “Binsey Poplars,” Gerard Manley Hopkins takes note of the effect that these advances are having on the planet, with trees being brought down and landscapes forever changed. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Dirge” concludes Part II with a warning that the planet is beginning to sound a grave alarm.Part III: Searching for Balance questions how we can create more awareness for our planet’s plight, re-establish a deeper connection to it, and find a balance for living within our planet’s resources. Three texts continue the earth’s plea that ended the previous section: Lord Byron’s “Darkness” speaks of a natural disaster (a volcano) that has blotted out the sun from humanity and the panic that ensues; contemporary poet Esther Iverem’s “Earth Screaming” gives voice to the modern issues of our changing climate; and William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” warns us that we are almost out of time to change our course. Contemporary/agrarian poet Wendell Berry’s “The Want of Peace” speaks to us at the climax of the oratorio, reminding us that we can find harmony with the planet if we choose to live more simply, and to recall that we ourselves came from the earth. Two Walt Whitman texts (“A Child said, What is the grass?” and “There was a child went forth every day”) echo Berry’s thoughts, reminding us that we are of the earth, as is everything that we see on our planet. The oratorio concludes with a reprise of Whitman’s “A Blade of Grass” from Part I, this time interspersed with an additional Whitman text that sublimely states, “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love…”My hope in writing this oratorio is to invite audience members to consider how we interact with our planet, and what we can each personally do to keep the planet going for future generations. We are the only stewards Earth has; what can we each do to leave her in better shape than we found her?

SKU: HL.194659

ISBN 9781495073892. UPC: 888680641757. 9.0x12.0x0.262 inches.

It's super easy! This series features accessible arrangements for piano, with simple right-hand melody, letter names inside each note, basic left-hand chord diagrams, and no page turns. This edition includes 60 hymns: All Creatures of Our God and King • Amazing Grace • Be Thou My Vision • Beautiful Savior • The Church's One Foundation • Crown Him with Many Crowns • For the Beauty of the Earth • I Love to Tell the Story • It Is Well with My Soul • Just As I Am • A Mighty Fortress Is Our God • Nearer, My God, to Thee • O Worship the King • Rock of Ages • 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus • We Gather Together • What a Friend We Have in Jesus • When I Survey the Wondrous Cross • and many more.

SKU: P2.10024

The fourth part of the Chthonic Flute Suite commissioned by Areon Flutes in 2012. This suite has two main inspirations: ideologically it draws guidance from the book The Dream and the Underworld (1979)by James Hillman (1926-2011) and musically it explores the textural possibilities of a flute ensemble within the context of the heavy chamber music style I have developed with Edmund Welles: the bass clarinet quartet since 1996. The quartet is divided into three sections: Thymos--Phrenes--Chthonios. Thymos means blood vapour and is one of the elements that souls of the dead in the underworld completely lack, therefore they crave it and seek it out; they also lack breath consciousness or phrenes. The term chthonic [thon-ik] generally means underworld. However, Hillman thoroughly elaborates that its true meaning extends below the earth and beyond it (p.36) into invisible, non-physical and far distant psychic realms as opposed to being limited to a primitive earthiness that limits us to the physical and fertile underground. Hillman weaves a captivating and expanded perspective on chthonic and the deeper mysteries of the invisible, drawing from such sources as Greek and Egyptian mythology, Freud, Nietzsche, and more. The underworld is a realm of only psyche, a purely psychical world...underworld is the mythological style of describing a psychological cosmos. Put more bluntly: underworld is psyche. (p.46).

SKU: ST.CN4P

ISBN 9790220224614.

These time-honoured words so suitable for the musical adornment of a service of marriage or blessing receive a new and very moving encounter with music through the inspiration of Benjamin Woodgates. His five-part a cappella setting is in a simple three-part form, rightly illustrating the tempestuous waters that cannot quench love in a more strenuous middle section. The overall impression however is of the stillness and solemnity of a special moment of ceremony, by definition unique and unrepeatable, which will nonetheless be renewed in spirit with every performance of this glowing and rapturous setting.