Over the course of the last 15 years, David Lang and The Crossing, the Grammy-winning chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally, have crafted a body of work that stands apart from the rest for its profound spiritual connection to our shared sense of humanity — through our stories, our myths, our beliefs and our dreams. 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙨 is a milestone of sorts, because it celebrates that connection, across time and space, to deliver a message that music can be a benevolent force for change if we only take the time to listen.
“This album is a collection of works that capture the intimate side of The Crossing’s relationship with David Lang,” Nally explains. “Only two were written for us, yet the others reflect a shared world view, a common idea about sound and community, and a collective focus on our reason for singing. David’s thoroughly considered thoughts on ‘why we do this’ have influenced The Crossing’s perpetually reexamined thoughts on that question: how to communicate deep feelings, absent of ego.”
the sense of senses
music and words by David Lang (after Song of Songs)
Co-commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally; Company of Music, Vienna, Johannes Hiemetsberger, director; and the Fisher Center at Bard College
the sense of senses is one in a series of pieces I have been writing over the past several years, in which I have applied different literary filters to the text of the biblical ‘Song of Songs.’ The idea behind this series is that if we look at the text from many different angles it may eventually begin to reveal more of its emotional and spiritual powers.
What makes the ‘Song of Songs’ stand out from other Biblical texts is, of course, its intense sensuality. One way the text makes us feel the spark between the lovers – which is, after all, a metaphor for the spark between believers and God – is the heightened use of language that places us in the middle of the action. It tells the story by constantly triggering our senses. The lovers see the vines and vineyards, they smell the frankincense and myrrh, they taste the honey and the wine. Our connection to the story is deepened because the details are described to us in ways that we, ourselves, can imagine seeing, and smelling, and tasting.
I wanted to catalog all the senses in the text, so I filtered out everything except that which is seen, heard, smelled, felt and tasted, and I kept these in the order in which the story mentions them. I removed characteristics or parts of the body that would gender who is speaking, and then I rearranged the order of the senses, so that all of the seen things would be together, all the heard things, all the felt things, etc. I then ordered the senses from far to near – from sight to sound to smell to feeling to taste – so that we might feel the power of the senses grow and intensify, as they come closer to us.
sleeper’s prayer
music and words by David Lang
sleeper’s prayer was originally written for boy soprano and organ, and I arranged it for chamber choir in 2019, for Benjamin Nicholas and the Choir of Merton College, Oxford.. The commissioners — the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Jacaranda — specifically asked me to write a piece that would include the spectacular and powerful organ in Walt Disney Hall. I am a little scared of concert organs – their sound can be overwhelming, and I started wondering if I could make the fear of being overwhelmed part of the piece. I thought if I had a very small and fragile voice singing along with the organ, we would care about the power imbalance between the two. It might make us feel that the singer needed both support and protection from the organ, the way we all need support and protection from the world, and from life in general.
Then I remembered the prayers that religious Jews say before going to bed. The prospective sleeper might say these prayers to calm himself or herself, to give thanks, and to ask for protection in the night, when the sleeper is most vulnerable and unguarded. For my text, I rewrote a portion of these prayers, trying to focus on just how fragile peacefulness really is, and on how much we need it.
sleeper’s prayer is dedicated to Steve Reich and was written to celebrate his 80th birthday.
just (after song of songs)
music and words by David Lang
just (after song of songs) is a setting of a text I made by finding certain things in the Song of Songs. The original text is of course the most passionate and erotic of the ancient Jewish books, and it is always strange to encounter it in the Bible. In 2008 I wrote a choral piece called for love is strong, in which I made a similar text from the Song of Songs, trying to use the words to see through the relationship between the man and the woman in the story to the relationship between Man and God. According to Jewish tradition the Song of Songs is a metaphor for our passion for the Eternal, so the words themselves become very important.
One thing that has always interested me about the text is that the man and the woman in the Song of Songs have attributes, they notice things about each other, they own things, they have features that are desirable. In a love between people this would be no surprise. In a love between Man and God, however, that might mean that in this text are clues to the nature of God’s own attributes, and a record of how they might attract us.
For my text I listed everything personal or owned that is attributed to the man and to the woman. To clarify who is speaking I started every phrase of his with ‘just your’ and every phrase of hers with ‘and my.’ It is interesting that in a text about a love that is shared there are only seven instances of ‘our.’
just (after song of songs) is dedicated to my friends Amy Podmore and Frank Jackson.
make peace
music and words by David Lang (after the mourner’s kaddish)
make peace is a Jeff Quartet, from The Crossing’s 2016 commissioning project honoring co-founder Jeff Dinsmore; fifteen composers who knew and worked Jeff wrote these quartets in his memory. The commissioning of make peace was supported by The Ann Stookey Fund for New Music.
The text for make peace is a rewriting of the last section of the Kaddish, the prayer that Jews say in memory of the dead. It is dedicated to the memory of my uncle, Herbert Eugene Lang.
stateless
music and words by David Lang, after a letter by Rabbi Moses ben Nachman
The Crossing presented the English-language world premiere of stateless as one of the four films of its pre-election project The Crossing Votes: 2020, released October 26, 2020. The recording was made with singers distanced from one another. (more here)
I got very happy at the thought of writing a piece that would premiere in Barcelona. Barcelona has always meant a lot to me – my mother was a child in Barcelona, which saved her life. My mother was born in Germany, in 1927. When Hitler came to power it was clear to many Jews that they would need to leave but there were few places they could go. In 1935 my Mother and her parents managed to get to Barcelona and they stayed until 1939. My childhood was full of her stories – hiding from the civil war, hiding that they were Jews. We visited several times when I was a boy and my mother would take us to the places she remembered, so we got to see Barcelona change in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It changed a lot – the broken down, one room storefront where her family lived is now a very fancy apartment building.
As a refugee, my mother was stateless, and the loss of belonging to a place stayed with her for her entire life. But she loved Barcelona and she would remind us of the long history of Jews in the region. In fact, one of the most famous medieval Jewish scholars – Rabbi Moses ben Nachman – was from nearby Girona. Like my mother, he also became stateless, when he was exiled from Spain in 1267. The text for my piece ‘stateless’ is a paraphrase of a letter that Rabbi Moses ben Nachman wrote to his children in Girona, from his exile in Jerusalem, describing his new life, blessing them, and wishing them well.
stateless was commissioned by the Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana, Simon Halsey, conductor, and was premiered, in a slightly different version and sung in Catalan, at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, 10 May 2019
the sense of senses
I can see a door
I can see a wall
I can see a wall
I can see companions
I can see in you
I can see Jerusalem
I can see Lebanon
I can see my dove
I can see that
I can see the bed
I can see the coals
I can see the company
I can see the crown
I can see the doves
I can see the field
I can see the flowers
I can see the fountain
I can see the foxes
I can see the fruit
I can see the fruits
I can see the garden
I can see the garden
I can see the garden
I can see the gold
I can see the green
I can see the hair
I can see the horses
I can see the jealousy
I can see the jewels
I can see the joints
I can see the lions
I can see the marble
I can see the morning
I can see the mountains
I can see the pillars
I can see the pillars
I can see the roe
I can see the rose
I can see the studs
I can see the sun
I can see the swords
I can see the tents
I can see the thousand
I can see the top
I can see the vine
I can see the vineyard
I can see the vineyard
I can see the vineyard
I can see the vineyards
I can see the waters
I can see threescore
I can see Tirzah
I can see virgins
I can see you
I can hear her
I can hear the birds
I can hear you
I can smell the apples
I can smell the bed
I can smell the beds
I can smell the calamus
I can smell the camphire
I can smell the camphire
I can smell the frankincense
I can smell the garments
I can smell the lilies
I can smell the mandrakes
I can smell the myrrh
I can smell the myrrh
I can smell the myrrh
I can smell the myrrh
I can smell the myrrh
I can smell the ointments
I can smell the spices
I can smell the spices
I can smell the spikenard
I can smell the spikenard
I can smell the tender grape
I can smell the wheat
I can smell your good ointments
I can feel the banner
I can feel the day
I can feel the day
I can feel the desire
I can feel the dew
I can feel the fear
I can feel the north wind
I can feel the seal
I can feel the seal
I can feel the shade
I can feel the shadows
I can feel the shadows
I can feel the south wind
I can feel you
I can taste the apples
I can taste the best wine
I can taste the fruit
I can taste the honey
I can taste the honeycomb
I can taste the honeycomb
I can taste the liquor
I can taste the pleasant fruits
I can taste the pleasant fruits
I can taste the pomegranates
I can taste the spiced wine
I can taste the wine
I can taste the wine
I can taste the wine
I can taste you
I can taste you
I can taste your kiss
I can taste your kiss
I can taste your lips
I can taste your lip
I can taste your mouth
I can taste your mouth
I can taste your wine
sleeper’s prayer
when sleep falls upon my eyes
let me lie down in peace
let me rise up again in peace
no evil dreams
no sleep of death
no snare
no sorrow
no terror by night
no arrow by day
no thousand at my left
no ten thousand at my right
let me lie down in peace
let me rise up again in peace
let me find my better self
when I go out
when I come in
when I lie down
when I rise up
in life
in peace
now and forever
by day
by night
when I lie down
when I rise up
let me lie down in peace
let me rise up again in peace
at my right hand
at my left hand
before me
behind me
above me
just (after song of songs)
just your mouth
just your love
just your anointing oils
just your name
just your chambers
just your love
and my mother’s sons
and my own vineyard
and my soul
just your flock
just your companions
just your kids
just your cheeks
just your neck
just your couch
and my perfume
and my beloved
and my breasts
and my beloved
and my love
just your eyes
and my beloved
our couch
our house
our rafters
and my love
and my beloved
just your shadow
just your fruit
just your banner over me
just your left hand
just your right hand
and my beloved
and my beloved
our wall
and my beloved
and my love
and my fair one
and my love
and my fair one
and my dove
just your face
just your voice
just your voice
just your face
our vineyards
and my beloved
just your flock
and my beloved
and my bed
and my soul
and my soul
and my soul
and my soul
any my mother’s house
just your sword
just your mother
just your wedding
just your heart
and my love
just your eyes
just your veil
just your hair
just your teeth
just your lips
just your mouth
just your cheeks
just your veil
just your neck
just your two breasts
and my love
and my bride
and my heart
and my sister
and my bride
and my heart
just your eyes
just your necklace
just your love
and my sister
and my bride
just your love
just your oils
just your lips
and my bride
just your tongue
just your garments
and my sister
and my bride
just your shoots
and my garden
and by beloved
and my garden
and my sister
and my bride
and my myrrh
and my spice
and my honeycomb
and my honey
and my wine
and my milk
and my heart
and my beloved
and my sister
and my love
and my dove
and my perfect one
and my head
and my locks
and my garment
and my feet
and my beloved
and my hand
and my heart
and my beloved
and my hands
and my fingers
and my beloved
and my beloved
and my soul
and my beloved
just your beloved
just your beloved
and my beloved
just your head
just your locks
just your eyes
just your cheeks
just your lips
just your arms
just your body
just you legs
just your appearance
just your speech
and my beloved
and my friend
just your beloved
and my beloved
just your garden
just your flock
and my beloved
and my beloved
just your flock
and my love
just your eyes
just your hair
just your teeth
just your cheeks
and my dove
and my perfect one
and my mother
and my fancy
and my prince
just your feet
just your rounded thighs
just your navel
just your belly
just your two breasts
just your neck
just your eyes
just your nose
just your head
just your flowing locks
just your breasts
just your breasts
just your breath
just your kisses
and my beloved
just your desire
and my beloved
and my love
our doors
and my beloved
and my mother’s breast
and my mother
and my pomegranates
just your left hand
just your right hand
and my beloved
just your mother
just your heart
just your arm
our sister
and my breasts
just your eyes
and my vineyard
and my very own
and my self
just your voice
and my beloved
make peace
if you can make peace
make peace
in the heavens
in us
in all the world
make peace
stateless
I left my family
I left my house
I left my sons and daughters
my heart and my eyes will dwell with them forever
and so I came to this land
what can I tell you about this land?
the more sacred the space
the greater the devastation
even in its destruction
it is a good land
we are all refugees here
we found some ruins of a house
built on pillars of marble
with a marble dome
we volunteered to fix the house
we built a temple there
many people come
from all across the land
they come to see what happened here
those of us who have seen the land destroyed
let us see the land restored
and you, my children
may you deserve all that is good in this world
THE CROSSING
Walter Aldrich 1 • Isobel Anthony 1 • Katy Avery 1,2 • Jessica Beebe 2,3 • Julie Bishop 2 • Kelly Ann Bixby 1,2 • Karen Blanchard 1,2,3,4 • Steven Bradshaw 1,3,4 • Matthew Cramer 1 • Colin Dill 3 • Micah Dingler 1,3 • Ryan Flemming • Joanna Gates 1,2 • Steven Hyder 1 • Michael Jones 1,3,4 • Heather Kayan 2 • Lauren Kelly 1 • Anika Kildegaard 1 • Heidi Kurtz 1,3,6 • Maren Montalbano 1,2,3 • Rebecca Myers 2,3 • Daniel O’Dea 1 • Rebecca Oehlers 2,3 • James Reese 3 • Daniel Schwartz 1,3,4 • Thann Scoggin 1 • Rebecca Siler 1,2,3,4 • Tiana Sorenson 1 • Daniel Spratlan 1,3 • Elisa Sutherland 1,2,3,4 • Daniel Taylor 1,3
the sense of senses, sleeper’s prayer, make peace
just (after song of songs)
stateless
soloists in stateless
Donald Nally - conductor
Kevin Vondrak - associate conductor
John Grecia - company keyboardist, and organ on sleeper’s prayer
John Conahan and John Walthausen - guest keyboardists (December 2022)
Paul Vazquez - sound designer
on just (after song of songs)
Petula Perdikis - viola
Mimi Morris-Kim - cello
Ted Babcock - percussion
Produced by Paul Vazquez, Donald Nally & Kevin Vondrak
Recording Engineers: Paul Vazquez (July 2020 and December 2022) and Nick Tipp (June 2018)
Assistant Recording Engineers: Dante Portella & Codi Yhap (December 2022), Marshall White (June 2018)
Editing, Mixing and Mastering: Paul Vazquez
Additional Editing on just (after song of songs): Dante Portella
Production Assistants: Ben Perri (December 2022), Jeremy Edelstein & Hunter Gregory (June 2018)
the sense of senses, sleeper's prayer and make peace were recorded on December 9 and 10, 2022 at The High Point at St. Peter’s in the Great Valley, Malvern, PA.
just (after song of songs) was recorded on June 5 and 8, 2018 at Morning Star Studios, Norristown, PA.
stateless was recorded on July 30, 2020 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, PA and originally released as a film by Eric Southern with art by Steven Bradshaw with Nyahzul C. Blanco.
This album was made possible through the generous support of Carol Westfall.