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for a cappella mixed choir |
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| To experience such a presence is sometimes brought about by extreme conditions. Such emotion can then open the door to spirituality. Music is for me a privileged means of opening that path. Its hypnotic strength allows us to access inner powers, the limits of which are not known to us, but some aspects of which are then revealed. Music, when it touches us, conjures up this presence. Excerpts from rehearsal: excerpt 1 excerpt 2 excerpt 3 Score Text by Ernest Shackleton Extracted from his logbook ("South") and followed by the adaptation made by T.S. Eliot. We looked back, and saw the grey fingers of the fog appearing on the ridge, as though reaching after the intruders into untrodden wilds We sat down as close to one another as possible, and put our arms round each other. shook them and gave the word for a fresh start. We were so stiff that for the first two or three hundred yards we marched with our knees bent. Night was upon us. Along that pathway in the wake of the moon we advanced in safety, with shadows cast by the edges of crevasses showing black on either side of us. Our minds were set upon reaching the haunts of man. Laughter was in our heart, though not on our parched and cracked lips. Our desires were giving wings to our fancies. Onwards and upwards through the soft snow we marched, resting now and then on hard patches which had revealed themselves by glittering ahead of us in the white light. In memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man. When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across the snowfields, but across the storm-white sea. I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another one with us. Extracted from "South" by Sir Ernest Shackleton Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman -But who is that one on the other side of you ? Extracted from the "Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot |  |