The Gift of Singing

This seven-minute piece is a gift which the composer presented to the University of Kansas in gratitude for its honorary doctorate.

Text: various authors

Composer's Note

I wrote this piece with the feeling that it was an autobiography as well as a biography of most composers, conductors and singers. I chose a wide variety of texts, both poignant and humorous, beginning with a poem by George Dillon:

I have no thing that is mine sure
To give you, I am born so poor.
Whatever I have was given me:
The earth, the air, the sun, the sea.

If I have anything to give
Made surely of the life I live,
It is a song that I have made.
Now in your keeping it is laid.

I marked the music “Adagio semplice, like a folk song.” Later, after a quotation from a traditional hymn, “How Can I Keep from Singing?” it touches in rapid succession a wide variety of quotations including: “The only thing better than singing is more singing” (Ella Fitzgerald); and “I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing” (William James).

Press

“An inspiring work for chorus and piano…. Mechem chose an enormous variety of texts both emotionally touching and amusing, to illustrate his life.”
— Cover article in Choral Journal, November, 2016.