Choral Choir (SATB) - Digital Download SKU: A0.1035265 Composed by Burton Goldstein. 20th Century,Contemporary,Sacred,Spiritual. Octavo. 24 pages. Burton Goldstein Music #5001051. Published by Burton Goldstein Music (A0.1035265). In setting the Lord's Prayer to music, I looked up what Jesus said to his followers about how the Prayer should be said. In the Cambridge translation of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: When thou prayest enter into thy closet...pray to thy Father which is in secret. Do not send a trumpet before thee.... Do not pray ostentatiously with vain repetition. I was surprised at this image of the Lord’s Prayer; perhaps I had Handel's Messiah and sound the trumpets and a huge congregation in the back of my mind. I became intrigued with the image of a man facing his God secretly, in an absolutely solitary and personal way.In this piece, the style of singing should be closely related to this style of praying. The performance should emphasize the quiet, meditative quality of the piece. The harmonic language I made for this piece is meant to convey a mysterious, mystical feeling, a feeling of intense inward concentration, in part conveyed by the close spacing of the chords at the beginning and the single, common tone that runs through these chords. This concentration leads to a sense of transcendence, in part created by the opening up of the close spacing especially beginning at m.26 and culminating in the floating section at m.38.I did not repeat any of the text, except the final Amen.
