Music – dw piano music

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve.

— Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

Here’s a traditional gospel tune by Samuel Webbe, words by Thomas Moore and Thomas Hastings. My arrangement is based largely on the beautiful recording done by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway: https://youtu.be/7h8hTomC_8M

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish;
Come to the mercy-seat, fervently kneel;
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish,
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

Joy of the comfortless, light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure;
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying—
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure.

Here see the Bread of Life; see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above;
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.

See Lize Bard’s lovely haiku site. The poem below is titled “Your Song”.

Haiku out of Africa

soft tone in my ears ~ an explosion in my mind ~ never stop singing

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This is a piano version of a choral setting of the song of Mary (often called the Magnificat) from the Gospel of Luke.

Grace and peace to you…

My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

For he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

His mercy is on them who fear him throughout all generations. He has fed the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away.

He has showed strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and meek.

He has helped his servant, the people Israel, remembering his mercy as promised to our fathers, Abraham and his children forever.

(Text of choral arrangement, based on 1940 Hymnal.)