Colin Touchin - Choose the Light 4: RENEW THE LIFE

Choose the Light 4: RENEW THE LIFE

Instrumentation

as above

Recording, download - 0.98MB

Score, download - 16.75MB

Colin Touchin - Choose the Light 4: RENEW THE LIFE

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: Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School - Renew the life you are living

Renew the life you are living,

Leave your past behind.

Look into the mirror of your future on earth.

Grasp it. Transform it.

 

In terror do we turn to help

Or run to save the self?

When the plague strikes do we hide

Or do we wipe the brow of the dying?

When starvation roars in the stomach of children

Do we feed our own or give them bread?

 

When our brother falls do we help him up?

When our sister chooses darkness do we show her the light?

When London burns do we blame the youth?

Or do we look at where they got the matches from?

 

Renew the life you are living,

Leave your past behind.

Look into the mirror of your future on earth.

Grasp it. Transform it.

 

Did you give the beggar your hand?

Did you ease the pain of division with friendship?

Did you help your neighbour?

Did you do the right thing?

 

You can choose, You can change.

Beyond chiselled peaks of stone and grand arches,

Beneath the heavens constructed to house the holy,

Behold the Doomsday painting, the ancient mystery,

Beware its warning, an apocalyptic prophecy.

 

Take heed,

Rest your eyes upon the ancient depiction.

 

You can choose, You can change.

Think of all the times the cry of a child has been unheard,

dismissed, forgotten, ignored.

 

Renew the life you are living,

Leave your past behind.

Look into the mirror of your future on earth.

Grasp it.

Transform it.

Colin Touchin - Choose the Light 4: RENEW THE LIFE

Colin Touchin - Choose the Light 4: RENEW THE LIFE