A new score for our times

Another new score is up on my scores page, a setting of the Advent antiphon "O Clavis David." I started working on this piece some months before the pandemic hit, but was inspired to push it through to a finished product while cooped up here at home. The setting is in Latin; a rough English translation is:

 

O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel,

Who opens, and no one can shut; shuts, and no one can open;

Come and free the captive from the prison house,

who sits in darkness and the shadow of death.

 

I'd initially thought to dedicate it to refugees and immigrants unjustly detained; but now it speaks to all of us who are effectively under house arrest "for the duration." I can only hope that when the Advent season comes this year there will be choral concerts again, and that somewhere people will gather to sing this piece and hear it sung and recall a feeling of confinement that will then be a memory.