God Bless the Young Folk (SATB)

For VocalEssence’s Talented Tenth Apprentice Program. Text by WEB DuBois;  Prayers for Dark People and The Talented Tenth.

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Written in 2008 for the VocalEssence Talented Tenth Apprentice Program, this setting of W. E. B. DuBois texts celebrates “the young folk, they that seek and seldom find.” The mesmerizing repetition of the text and the gradual addition of voices culminate in a triumphant celebration of those young folk “who open up the hidden ways” – “their souls hunger after God.”

God bless the young folk, they that seek and seldom find
And yet ceaselessly do seek some Truer, Better Thing.
These are they, O Lord, who open up the hidden ways,
For the ways of the young are wide,
And their souls hunger after God.
If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down.
There must be teachers, and teachers of teachers.

Adapted from
Prayers for Dark People (1910)
and The Talented Tenth (1903)
by W. E. B. DuBois

 

Genre

Vocal Duet

Instrumentation

SATB, piano

Listen

Sample Recording by First Readings Project/J. David Moore

Duration

c. 3:15

Year Written

2017