“Set your minds on the things above, not the things that are on earth.”
– St Paul, letter to the church in Colossae
Six Meditations for double bass and piano a suite of six short and lyric compositions which use American folk hymns as their source material, largely from William Walker's Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion. However, these are not simple arrangements; they are original works where the source hymntune is often very well obscured. Each movement is accompanied with a verse of Scripture related to the hymn which provides the subject of the meditation. George Steiner comments upon this inherent mysticism of the ineffable in his essay ‘Silence and the Poet’ from his collection Language and Silence: Essays in Language, Literature and the Inhuman when he writes, “But it is decisively the fact that language does have its frontiers, that it borders on three other modes of statement – light, music and silence – which gives proof of a transcendent presence in the fabric of the world. It is just because we can go no further, because speech so marvellously fails us, that we experience the certitude of a divine meaning surpassing and enfolding ours. What lies beyond man�s word is eloquent of God” (New York: Atheneum, 1967; p. 39).
I. I Wonder
II. God Is Seen
III. Restoration
IV. Foundation
V. Resignation
VI. Wondrous Love