Do You Hear How Many You Are?

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Do You Hear How Many You Are? for SATB choir was written in April and May of 2010.  The origins of this piece and text come from a very interesting experience I had in December of 2009.  I have been learning a lot in the past few years about the state of our world and the many huge problems and crises we are faced with in the near future, and this discovery has been so daunting and overwhelming to me.  So much change needs to happen in order for the near and long-term future of our world to be just and stable that I have felt a lot of guilt over my choice of profession.  Why have I chosen to be a composer and musician when I could make more of an impact on solving these problems if I were a scientist or policy maker etc.?  I have been struggling to find a solution to this dilemma for a while now and I just happened to be thinking about it, while filled with lots of stress and worries, one night as I was falling asleep in December of 2009.  At the moment when I was in that state halfway between sleep and consciousness, I suddenly heard the line “Do you hear how many you are?” in my head, yet I felt as though I didn't come up with the line but that it was said TO me.  I was instantly comforted, as if a load fell off my shoulders, and then I began to hear it being sung, which I knew was the beginning of a choral piece.  I woke up, wrote down the music I was hearing (about the first six measures of the work) and then wrote down this entire poem.  I truly feel that this message came to me for a reason, and that I need to share it through the music I create.  Those of us who want to change the world for the better are not alone; we are many and we will make our voices hear in order to heal the world. 

Winner, 2010 Ars Nova Singers Colorado Composers Competition (Professional Division)

Winner, 1st Prize, 2014 Warren County Summer Music School’s Promising Young Composers Competition.

Premiered June 3, 2011 by the Ars Nova Singers, Thomas Morgan-conductor, in Boulder, CO.

Recorded by the Chorosynthesis Singers on Empowering Silenced Voices (Centaur Records)

What People are Saying

Text

Do you hear how many you are?
You are multitudes,
Breathing glory.
The most precious hands of God made you.
Certain of your perfectness,
Weaving in your holiness,
Knowing in your frayed distress
You will find a way,
Through garlands you lay.

Do you hear how many you are?
You are countless,
Dreaming of peace.
The sweetest gift of love you bring
Throughout the sunken earth,
Believing in its worth,
Delight in the rebirth of all you are
I am never far.

Do you hear how many you are?
You are wonders,
Splendidly wayward,
Come home and find yourselves in me.
White lilies on the wing, 
The comfort of nothing,
You know this as you sing
A petal kisses dew
I am with you.

-Keane Southard