Eric Whitacre has produced a virtual choir of over 2000 voices doing a peace titled, "Sleep." Amazing and beautiful in its melding of voices from all over the world. Take a few moments and listen to the whole thing.
Here in Anglicanland, I wonder if a response to the Anglican Covenant "idea" would be to gather a vocal choir from across Anglicanland to sing together one or the other of the canticles - say The Magnificat - done in Anglican chant, perhaps with a singable modern tune - with voices from across the Anglican Communion.
Perhaps the real Covenant is the covenant written in our hearts by prayer and voice. And perhaps the beauty of voices from the many churches in the communion singing together will be greater than the poor efforts to produce a document that does not sing.
Rather one song that sings then ten thousand words that can not dance.
Up in Canada there have been several wonderful video / audio compilations of voices. The Amazing Grace project was one.
Ruth Gledhill has reported on a project, much anticipated, of multi-faith voices coming together to sing. It will be out Easter. Again, another example of singing beyond the edges of the walls that divide.
So here at Preludium where we wait for something to break through the sound barrier of voices that make a wall, perhaps we wait for someone to pull us all together to sing with common prayer and find our common voice.
I think this is a wonderful idea!
ReplyDeleteA compilation like the one you show would be great. And what about a worldwide 'Flash Mob' (did you see the one of the Messiah)? We could invite people to take part at a particular time on a particular day in all the different time zones, record the 'concerts' on their mobile/cell phones and send them in to be co-ordinated at a central place (I suppose we are too late to organise for this Easter?)
Wouldn't it be great to coordinate something like this in time for GC 2012... a piece that could pop up from time to time as a reminder of the larger church and why we are doing what we are doing at GC. Hmm, how can we coordinate this and what would we choose to sing and who would conduct it? Not impossible questions to answer, really, if we let our imaginations soar.
ReplyDeleteCaminante, these folks were not actually all singing together, the way Maestro Whitacre does it is that he provides a sheet music file and an individual parts practice audio file for download. Folks practice their part and when ready they video record themselves singing to the audio recording to which they are listening in the earphones and headphones which you see in their videos. They then upload these videos to his site.
ReplyDeleteThe real work is an audio video engineer to put all the individual videos together.
I know they are not together; what I was trying to say was that we do a like thing — get people to record individually and then have someone pull it all together. I wasn't clear earlier but then, I was getting ready for a wedding :)
ReplyDelete"Rather one song that sings then ten thousand words that can not dance."
ReplyDeleteRight on!