program note
The choral conductor Craig Hella Johnson asked me to write a contemporary spiritual, for a program that he was designing for his chorus Conspirare. My understanding of his concept was that it might be interesting to make a program of music that was more a response to the genre of spirituals and what they mean than to try to connect through spirituals directly to slavery and the African American experience. I hope I got that right! With this in mind I found a traditional song – ‘lay this body down’ – and universalized it, changing the text slightly and the harmony greatly, magnifying the notion in the text that faith might ease our journey towards a peaceful death.
–David Lang
