I seem to have stumbled on a revelation during our Masterworks Chorale rehearsal last week. As I have written before, I have an ongoing dialog with myself about song texts, especially choral texts since so much of what I have sung in the choral world is sacred text. So many of the texts I sing are important to me, but not often in exactly the same way they may be to someone else. I can quickly draw up a short list of some of the most beautiful, fantastic, and moving things that I have sung many times and that I will never grow tired of singing. I realized in a split second last week that nearly every text I would count on my “love these the most” list relates in some way to water.
Coming to the water for replenishment or cleansing. Being pulled, lifted, or saved from the water when sinking. Going to water to pray. Going to water as part of a study or practice. Hearing eternal music on a distant shore. Clinging to a rock with inner calm while a storm rages. Wide water that one cannot cross – without a boat and love.
Oh let all who thirst, all who have nothing, all who seek, all who toil, all who are weary, all the poor, all who are laden, all the children… Let them come to the water.
When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown… Christ laid aside his crown for my soul. And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good ol’ way, and who shall wear the starry crown? Good Lord, show me the way! Oh sisters, let’s go down – down in the river to pray.
Hark, I hear the harps eternal ringing on the farther shore, as I near those swollen waters, with their deep and solemn roar.
What though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth it liveth. What though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging. Since I believe that love abides, how can I keep from singing?
The water is wide, I cannot get o’er. Neither have I wings to fly. Give me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row, my love and I.
It’s interesting to me that suddenly I have made the water connection between several different texts – especially when I am ultimately and primarily afraid of water. I can’t swim, and have a fear of drowning. When I look at the individual texts and poems, I can identify with some of them and not as much with others – but I love them all in their sung settings.
I haven’t begun to touch on anything this might mean, but it does not seem insignificant to me that there’s a theme here I hadn’t noticed before. And it’s a fine theme for my ever-conversing-with-itself mind to think on.
(And just so you know, I laughed myself silly as I was wrapping up the yammering nature of this post - when I decided I needed a glass of wine. Water into wine!)
