Let Us Praise the Door (from To Know the Path)

$1.75

This is the second movement “II. Lauds” from the larger work To Know the Path. Energetic mixed meter movement from To Know the Path explores the paradox of the door as both passage and barrier.

Text: Athena Kildegaard

Co-Commissioned by: Amherst College Chorale Society, Arianne Abela, director; Border CrosSing and the Unity Singers, Ahmed Anzaldúa, director; and Central Presbyterian Church Choir, Jennifer Anderson, director.

Publisher: Published by Border CroSsing and distributed by Graphite Marketplace.

SKU: BC-010 Categories: ,
You can peruse this score here.

Let us praise the door
how it closes and we’re safe inside
how it opens so we can go out into rain or wind or sunshine
carrying children on our shoulders

Let us praise the door and how, when we return, the door opens

Doors open onto boats and trains, cars, wagons, trucks and busses
doors open onto windowless places and onto places full of light
and doors open to the night and to the morning
On the day of birth and the day of death a door opens

Let us praise doors without razor wire or radar systems or spotlights
or infrared sensors or surveillance cameras or weaponized men and
women who carry no keys
doors without drones or key-coded locks or dead bolts or motion
sensors or wireless monitors or remote-controlled cameras

Let us praise doors we can open
with our own hands
doors we open to loved ones and to strangers
doors we pass through
one foot after the other
sure of a welcome on the other side

Let us be the refuge on the other side.

– Athena Kildegaard

This is excerpted from the larger work, To Know the Path. Dawn and the energy of a new day. At letter C, make sure the text is clearly enunciated throughout the spoken section. Note the relative lower voicing on the staff when the voices start low and hushed (murmured, not whispered), gradually getting higher and louder until it is a shout by the end of the section.

Premiered by Border CrosSing.

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