The Story of a Leader Sheet Music to download and print

The Story of a Leader

Choral Choir (SATB) - Level 5 - Digital Download SKU: A0.1143904 Composed by Igor Korneitchouk. 20th Century,A Cappella,Contemporary,Religious. Octavo. 37 pages. Studio at the Post #744209. Published by Studio at the Post (A0.1143904). Duration: 16 minutes, 33 pp. Description: Exodus is a great story that belongs to everyone. Not only is it central to Judaism, not only is it integral to the Christian Bible, it is an immortal story that has been, and continues to be, an inspiration to oppressed peoples everywhere on this planet. It is relevant not just as ancient scripture but as living text, to be rediscovered by each new generation of an ever-widening Family of Man. The theme of struggle against oppression and slavery was just as relevant to the early Christians persecuted in Ancient Rome as it was relevant to the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, just as relevant to the Soviet Jews wishing to emigrate as it is to the South African Blacks resisting Apartheid. From the Dark Ages and the Spanish Inquisition, to Ghandi's emancipation of India, to the Holocaust, to, full-circle, the ongoing struggles in Palestine today, the story of Exodus is a guiding light in a dim and often grim world. According to the composer: The Story of a Leader is a collection of ‘re-chorales’ I created one summer when I was totally immersed in a post-educational obsession with the 371 Chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach. We used to study these to learn the rules of harmony and voice-leading (no parallel fifths, avoid crossed voices, etc.) at the Cleveland Institute of Music where I began my compositional career. That summer, now a professor of music in my own right, I discovered many broken and bent rules by the master himself and, along with the glory of being able to work through these Chorales myself at the piano, I felt an incredible feeling of liberation and possibilities unmediated by instructors of music theory. I began by stripping away all that Bach wrote, leaving only the hymn tunes which were not his to begin with. These tunes existed long before Bach used them for his tonal experiments, some attributed to Martin Luther, or someone else, others simply listed as ‘anonymous’. The same is true for the texts, which were then translated into English mostly in the 19th century (the provenance of each can be found herein on the first page of each of my reharmonizations). In some cases I modified the text to fit the context. I selected 12 of these ‘re-chorales,’ linking them together based on their texts in a kind of logic that worked for me, and created a narrative that told The Story of a Leader (Moses). This story is highlighted in the music with such techniques as cross-modal harmonies, points of imitation, a beer drinking song in one instance, and in another, to symbolize the parting of the seas for Moses’ people, an inversion of the soprano line in the bass..

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