Scott Ordway

Audio Available

Component

Delivery

Eprint Folders

Grade

Item Sequence

Large Print Edition

Marketed Status

Minimum Sell Quantity

MINTS Data Available

Product Line

Prop65

Score Available

Video Available

Voice

Voice Category

You Are My Brother (2019) utilizes an original text based on the Book of Genesis to imagine a love that must (may?) have existed between Cain and Abel in the early years of their lives. 

The two brothers function as archetypal siblings in western culture, and Cain as the progenitor of human conflict and violence. But each represents a second archetype as well: Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. These contrasting ways of life evoke distinct relationships to the landscape, to the family, and to society. They represent several other beautiful opposites as well: stability and movement, permanence and impermanence, plants and animals, community and solitude, security and freedom.

But the shepherd's vocation and farmer's converge again in that they both ultimately care for other living beings, and are in some sense rooted in love. In this way, the differences that separate the brothersand ultimately lead to tragedyare inseparable from the affection that binds them together. This short piece dwells on the warmth and trust that must have been present, to some degree, but are not typically conjured by the fable's infamous crime. Our deep collective knowledge of this ultimate outcome colors how we hear the work's jubilant outcry of love and its restful, embracing conclusion.

You Are My Brother

SATB

In 1948, a subcommittee of the nascent United Nations General Assembly crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which reflects both the trauma and the optimism of the immediate postwar period and is now recognized as a landmark text in the global history of human and civil rights.

Anyone reading it, however, will recognize that many of its provisions remain wildly aspirational and unevenly distributed. It espouses ideals of which we perennially fall short, but which are still worth aspiring to. We must credit its authors for the fact that they valued these forward-looking rights, and for their strength to believe that the future could be better than the past.

To create the text, I selected lines directly from the Declaration. I lightly edited some of them in order to make them more suitable for use as a text for music. I have set them in the second person in order to create a more dramatic dialogue between the singers and their audience.

In making my selections, I sought to focus on the rights which are most relevant to our public discourse in 2024. These include rights which are resonant because they have been fully secured only recently, as well as rights which remain stubbornly insecure in some parts of the world.

Scott Ordway (2024)

Rights

TTBB

Format

In September 2020, composer Scott Ordway asked 100 singers from four
  colleges to complete the sentence "One year ago today, I did not know
  that..." He compiled their submissions to create a crowdsourced poem in
  which each line is based on a single response.
    
    
    
    The result is a personal and deeply moving meditation on the early months
  of the pandemic. It serves as a memorial for those we lost as well as a
  celebration of the power and fragility of singing together as a group.
    
    
    
    Critics praised the piece as "a quiet work that says it all"
  (Philadelphia Inquirer) and "seamless...quietly
  melodic...masterful" (Phindie: Philadelphia Theater and Arts).
    
    
    
    Twenty / Twenty was commissioned by Haverford, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and
  Hamilton Colleges.

Twenty / Twenty

SATB Octavo

Contemporary setting of the Dona Nobis Pacem for SSAA choir.

Dona Nobis Pacem

SSAA

Three creation myths based on Finland's national epic poem, The Kalevala.
  Like the Christmas story, this creation myth is centered on a virgin
  birth.
    
    
    
    While this set can be performed at any time of the year, it is particularly
  appropriate for holiday and winter concerts.
    
    
    
    Commissioned by Oratorio Chorale (Portland, ME)
    
    
    
    7 minutes

Three Kalevala Songs

Global Sections - CORE [DO NOT TOUCH]*

Favicon

Need Help? Contact Us or call 1-800-345-6296    Live Chat

Header

Don't have a business account? Create one

CartDrawer

Children

TrustPilotScript

Customer Service

Selection Made Easy

About J.W. Pepper

J.W. Pepper

CustomFooter

Product List Page - CORE [DO NOT TOUCH]*

Breadcrumb

CustomProductGallery

Products

You Are My Brother

Rights

Twenty / Twenty

Dona Nobis Pacem

Three Kalevala Songs