What Stood Will Stand
SATB Choral Score
PEL2047-Choir Unaccompanied
A WORK FOR SATB (WITH DIVISI) CHOIR UNACCOMPANIED.
"What Stood Will Stand" is a setting of a poem by Wendell Berry from his collection "Sabbaths". It was composed by Halley for the occasion of a sermon given by Wendell Berry at The Cathedral of St. John The Divine, New York. Incorporating Alleluias and part of the Nicene Creed, the music is as powerful and moving as the words in this profoundly imagined poetry.
Composed in 1986 for the occasion of a sermon given by American poet, essayist, teacher and farmer, Wendell Berry. at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York.
Video
Notes
Included on 'Wondrous Love' recording from Pelagosmusic, with Chorus Angelicus and Gaudeamus, directed by Paul Halley (JN104)
Texts
What Stood Will Stand
Words: Wendell Berry (1934 - ) from “Sabbaths”
Music: Paul Halley (1952 - )
What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the wood all sing
And every field rejoice. Let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole, in ev’ry piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all fall.
Field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn
From The Nicene Creed
Et expecto resurrectionem motuorum.
Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. Alleluia.
And I look for the resurrection of the dead,
And the life of the world to come. Amen. Alleluia
