Then Shall Be Heard Music Here
- For SATB chorus (a cappella); secular text based on a plea for understanding and harmony from a New Hampshire abolitionist.
- Length: 4:00
- Difficulty rating (1-5): 4
Listen to a performance by the New Hampshire Master Chorale, Dan Perkins, conductor:
- View a PDF score excerpt
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- Score: $1.50 (for reproduction rights; minimum purchase of 10 required; additional charge for hard copies)
Then Shall Be Heard Music Here was commissioned and premiered by the New Hampshire Master Chorale, Dan Perkins, Music Director.
Nathaniel Peabody Rogers was a newspaper editor, noted abolitionist, and a native of the town where I now live and work—in fact, the building where I teach stands where his family estate, a rumored stop on the Underground Railroad, once stood. Thoreau and John Greenleaf Whittier commented approvingly on Rogers’ fiery writings on behalf of the universal equality of humankind. Few things have made me prouder of my adopted home than getting to know the work of this native son.
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Let Humanity be reverenced with the tenderest and loftiest devotion. Suffering, discouraged, downtrodden, hard-handed, haggard-eyed, care-worn mankind. Let these be regarded a little. Would to God I could alleviate their every sorrow, and leave them a chance to laugh! They are miserable now.
The world is out of tune now. But it will be tuned again, and all discord become harmony. When Slavery and War are abolished, and hanging and imprisoning, and all hatred and distrust—when the strife of humanity shall be, who will love most and help the readiest, when hangmen and generals, gibbets and jails shall have vanished from the surface of the delivered earth, then shall be heard music here, where they used to stand. The hills shall then break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands. —Nathaniel Peabody Rogers (1794-1846), alt. |
