Choose the Light 3: ONLY AN EARTHQUAKE

Instrumentation

as above

Score, download - 13.58MB

Other Information

 THE WORDS OF CHOOSE THE LIGHT

Choose The Light´ is a phrase culled from the young people´s writing. It perfectly expresses the complex moral choices that face all of us, and the importance of seeking peace and reconciliation. Choose the Light begins with words of the medieval hymn, Dies Iræ, the Day of Wrath, and ends with a setting of lines based on the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation written after the Cathedral was bombed in 1940, which we use with the permission of the Cathedral. The shift from the aggressive and forceful music of the Dies Iræ to the tender and merciful Litany maps the move from anger to reconciliation and peace. Between them come the songs of the individual schools. The piece begins with the appeal to ´Choose the Light´ almost overwhelmed by the Dies Iræ, the thirteenth-century Latin hymn describing the Day of Judgement, when the last trumpet will summon souls before the throne of God, the saved will be delivered and the doomed cast into eternal flames.

THE SCHOOL SONGS: Sidney Stringer Academy - Only an Earthquake

There were so many pictures.

Why was this one special?

I am only one painting, only an earthquake.

The darkness goes on forever;

It has great meaning like no other.

Why does this picture catch our eye?

The ground shakes; please help us, God.

We beg on our knees.

We cry: “the world will end”.

We wish the world would live: why end now?

Have we done wrong, hurt You?

Children beg to know what´s happening,

Adults beg for forgiveness.

There were so many pictures.

Why was this one special?

I am only one painting, only an earthquake.

Suddenly the trumpet pierces my burnt ears;

My tormented soul falls on the adamantine ground.

I feel death pulling me in.

I force my eyes shut, step forward;

Tears rolling down my pale cheeks; I cry for help.

I stagger up the stone stairs, I feel the chill of the wind

Burning my skin. The Devil´s eyes make my spine shiver.

I struggle to look away. I am resurrected

Before the Almighty God. I quiver with fear.

There were so many pictures.

Why was this one special?

I am only one painting, only an earthquake.

I hear His deep, supreme voice: it interrogates me.

He grabs me by my fragile, weak, corrupt bones.

The pain is worse than dying a thousand times.

The angels are as bright as the blazing, sacrificing sun.

The painting consumes me day and night!

The whole of the universe held in one painting, all trapped,

But some so free. People from all corners of the earth come to see.

They look with confusion and antipathy: they sense death is near.

There were so many pictures.

Why was this one special?

I am only one painting, only an earthquake.

I am only one painting.