FOUR A CAPPELLA MOVEMENTS

from REQUIEM FOR PEACE
by Larry Nickel

Home 9 Composers 9 REQUIEM FOR PEACE – UKRAINE 2020 – Chamber Orchestra 9 REQUIEM FOR PEACE – four a cappella movements

featuring the Kiev Symphony Chorus directed by Viktoriia Konchakovska on Feb 20, 2020
watch the video below

1) Kyrie eleison (Psalm 133 in Latin)

Kyrie, miserere nobis
Kyrie, dona nobis pacem
Kyrie eleison
Dona nobis pacem
Christe eleison
Exaudi orationem meam
Dona nobis pacem

2) Twenty Eight Bayonets (Russian)

translation to English

You are not destined to stay among the living,
You will not rise from the snow…
Twenty-eight wounds inflicted by bayonets,
Five gun-shot wounds.
A bitter new shroud
For my beloved I sewed.
Oh, how Russian earth,
loves, loves blood.

3) Håll Facklan Högt (Swedish – Pär Lagerkvist)

Tänd hoppets fackla i kvävande kväll,
blås levande själ i dess låga.
Än ligger glöden på altarets häll
och gudarna kan vi fråga.
Håll facklan högt
Låt ljuset skina av kärlek och fred,
få skina av kärlek och fred.
Vår människovärld har mörknat ner,
men åter skall eldarna tändas
och vigda facklor som klarhet ger
med budskap kring landen sändas.

translation to English

Light the torch of hope,
Blow living soul into its flame.
Still there is glow on the altar
Still the gods are there to be asked.
Hold the torch high
Shine the light of love and peace.
Our human world is getting darker,
But the fires can still be lit
And the torches can still give clarity
With a message sent around the world.

4) Reconciliation (Walt Whitman)

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage
must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters, Death and Night
incessantly softly wash again,
and ever again, this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin
I draw near, bend down
and touch lightly with my lips
the white face in the coffin