Maybe because I was in a pizza place near North Station--not a good venue for hearing televised poetry anyway--maybe because I wanted a little "churchin' up", I listened to the Closing Benediction.
It began lovely and familiar...turned out The Reverend Lowry was speaking some of the lyrics of "Lift Every Voice and Sing". I hope I wasn't the only non-African-American person who recognized it. Amen, amen, and amen, indeed.
And, yeah, the dearth of real religious plurality in the Prez's speech caught my ear too. The best I came up with was something like "from the Amish to the Zoroastrians", though.
I didn't catch the title of the musical piece at first, but I could hear it was based on "Simple Gifts" before the main theme came in. Sorry to be a nuffer (I like the original hymn), but did you get the feeling Williams sort of phoned it in after listening to Aaron Copeland for the "enth" time?
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Closing Benediction..."go in peace to love and serve [the world]"
Date: 2009-01-20 09:25 pm (UTC)It began lovely and familiar...turned out The Reverend Lowry was speaking some of the lyrics of "Lift Every Voice and Sing". I hope I wasn't the only non-African-American person who recognized it.
Amen, amen, and amen, indeed.
And, yeah, the dearth of real religious plurality in the Prez's speech caught my ear too. The best I came up with was something like "from the Amish to the Zoroastrians", though.
I didn't catch the title of the musical piece at first, but I could hear it was based on "Simple Gifts" before the main theme came in. Sorry to be a nuffer (I like the original hymn), but did you get the feeling Williams sort of phoned it in after listening to Aaron Copeland for the "enth" time?