sketch by Pascale Evrard |
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Purity of Intent and an Exquisite Choice of Notes is what Bach and Bird and all great music share in common. — David Amram |
| A Prayer for Peace |
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- San Jose Mercury News To listen click here available for "A Prayer for Peace" is relatively easy to perform, written in a chromatic tonal language. It lasts between five and a half and six minutes. The version for string orchestra is also playable by a string quartet by merely eliminating the bass part. Program notesWhen great tragedies unfold...people react in individual manners. I sat in shock watching the surreal story unfold on television. I watched along with much of the world as the World Trade Center Towers burned and then collapsed. I watched the flaming hole in the side of the Pentagon in horror. I saw thousands of people die before my eyes. I sat numb for a week, far from the United States, alone in my apartment in Oxford, where I had gone to compose a cello concerto. My mind was far from the concerto, far from music. I tried to put pen to paper but nothing happened. It was after a week of numbness that my feelings found their voice...this composition...this prayer. Once I began composing it seemed to flow from my pen, as naturally as the feelings that surged through my body. It had to be born. I offer this composition as my personal prayer...a prayer for a peaceful world...a world where there is no place for hatred or violence...a world in which religions recognize the overwhelming similarities that far overshadow their minor differences. When great tragedies unfold...people react in individual manners. This is my reaction.
Terry Vosbein
Oxford, England
September 2001
CLARINET QUARTET (3 B-flat clarinets, 1 bass clarinet & optional contrabass)
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