Like his Pulitzer-winning work the little match girl passion, David Lang’s 𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘺𝘮𝘯𝘢𝘭 tries to get to the core of what a religious experience can be. “What I love about hymnals,” the composer writes in his liner notes to the CD, “is that they’re a catalog of things a community of worshippers can agree on — a catalog that can be sung. And what the worshippers are singing about matters.”

𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘺𝘮𝘯𝘢𝘭 is a concert-length work written The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. Lang constructed the text by stitching together lines, phrases and poignant utterances from sources as varied as the Old Testament, Mahatma Gandhi and Tolstoy — to name just a few. As Lang explains: “This piece is trying to say: The reason we are coming together is to remember how important we are to each other, and to remember how important it is that we take care of each other.”

credits

released December 13, 2024

Produced by Paul Vazquez, Donald Nally, and Kevin Vondrak
Recording Engineer: Paul Vazquez
Assistant Recording Engineers: Christopher Vazquez and Codi Yhap
Editing, Mixing, and Mastering: Paul Vazquez

Recorded at Articulate Studios, Bloomsbury, NJ on December 18-20, 2023

poor hymnal was co-commissioned for The Crossing and Donald Nally by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting, Jill and Loren Bough, and Peggy and Mark Curchack, and by the Nederlands Kamerkoor.

The premiere performance and recording of poor hymnal are made possible through the generous support of Carol Westfall.