Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown of the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finish’d joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!
Adonai roi, lo ekhsar, binot deshe yarbitseni, al may menukhot yenahaleyni.
Nafshi yeshoveyv, yan kheyni ve magaley tsedek
Gam ki eylekh tsalmavet, lo ira ra, ki ata imadi.
Shivtekha umishantekha hema yenakhamuni.
Ta’arokh lefanay shulkan neged tsoreray, dishanta va shemen roshi, kosi revaya.
Akh tov va khesed yirdefuni kol yemai khayay, ve shavti beveyt Adonai le orekh yamim.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
In grassy meadows He makes me lie down, by quiet waters guides me.
My life He brings back.
He leads me on pathways of justice for His name’s sake.
Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow, I fear no harm, for You are with me.
Your rod and Your staff — it is they that console me.
You set out a table before me in the face of my foes.
You moisten my head with oil, my cup overflows.
Let but goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long days.
Oseh shalom bim romav
Hu ya se shalom aleynu
v’y al kol Yisrael, v’yimru amen.
Ya se shalom
Shalom aleynu
v’y al kol Yisrael
Oseh shalom bim romav
Hu ya se shalom aleynu
V’y al kol Yisrael,
V’al kol yosh ve tevel
v’yimru amen.
May the One who creates peace in the heavenly spheres
Create peace for us, for all Israel and for all the earth
And say, Amen.
PDF: In_Remembrance-sample.pdf
Countless composers have been and will continue to be inspired by the subject of memorializing the deceased. In Remembrance is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the courageous Ukrainian martyrs and of my sister Sylvia (1930-2021).
The pandemic has curtailed many activities and allowed me more time for composing than ever before, and I have taken advantage, this being my third completed work in as many years. Another ambition for which the pandemic gave me time was to read the complete works of Shakespeare. Just by coincidence I completed both In Remembrance and reading Shakespeare on October 25, 2022.
And it was in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline that I found the third of the texts I sought. Like the other two, “Fear No More” (Act IV, Scene 2) has been set to music by many composers. All three texts occur to me as being more about celebrating life than mourning death.
“Fear No More” is sung by Guiderius and Arviragus over the bodies of Cloten and Fidele (actually Imogen, who isn’t really dead, but that’s another matter. It’s a strange play.) I tried to apply Phrygian progressions and cadences to this text, it being of the Renaissance era. The
final verse breaks the strophic pattern, and I adopted the sequence of minor thirds used for the penultimate lines of the prior verses.
I am indebted to William Gilcher, my singing colleague in The City Choir of Washington, for the suggestion to begin Psalm 23 in English and gradually migrate to Hebrew in preparation for the final movement. Bill also pointed me to the Robert Alter translation, which best captures the sense of living in a peaceful meadow, confident of being protected from enemies. After three false starts I hit upon the up-and-down sequence of second-inversion chords in the right hand of the piano to convey the calmness and the tall grass gently waving in the breeze. Only in this movement did I employ choral divisi, alternating SSAT and AATB as a dialogue for the first three verses before going to SATB for the last three verses.
“Oseh Shalom” is the final verse or the Mourners’ Kaddish, the prayer of the bereaved. The text of the Mourners’ Kaddish is not about death or mourning; rather, it acknowledges the greatness and holiness of the Almighty and ends with a hope for peace for us, for all Israel and for all the earth. The last of the three — v’al kol yosh ve tevel — has been adopted relatively recently and makes the prayer more inclusive. The optimistic mood of the prayer and the upbeat traditional melody suggested to me a fugato treatment with the four vocal parts and the piano entering in turn, and the movement ending in the same manner as “Fear No More.”