RNY 1145 - David Lang Teach your children by Ricordi

david lang

teach your children

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commissioned by the San Francisco Choral Society, Robert Geary, Director

instrumentation

soprano solo

children’s chorus chorus

piccolo flute

2 oboes

2 clarinets in Bb

2 bassoons

4 horns in F

2 trumpets in C

2 trombones tuba

timpani

percussion (2 players)

violin 1 violin 2 viola violoncello double bass

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glockenspiel vibraphone hi hat bass drum

teach your children program note

When conductor Robert Geary asked me to write something for the combined forces of the San Francisco Choral Society and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir I immediately thought I should write a piece about a community and its relationship to its children. ‘teach your children’ is that piece.

For the past few years, as a counterbalance to my work with professional musicians around the world, I have been exploring how to invite larger communities of amateur musicians to participate in the music making process. ‘crowd out’ and ‘the public domain’ for choirs of 1000 amateur singers each, ‘the mile long opera’ for a 1000 solo community singers on the High Line in New York, ‘harmony and understanding’ for orchestra and audience, ‘symphony for broken instruments’ for all the broken instruments in the Philadelphia public school system, etc. All of these pieces deal in some way with who we are and how we relate to each other, right now. With this new piece I thought it could be useful to think about how we, as citizens, relate to what will happen to our world in the future.

In case you haven’t noticed, the world is a mess right now. Maybe the world always looks like a mess, when you are living through it in the present. We often describe the present mess by talking about how irresponsible we are to leave our present problems for our future children to solve. So I started wondering, how prepared are our children to solve our problems? What are we teaching them about who we are and who they are, what skills are we identifying that will prepare them to clean up after us? I wrote this piece so I could think more about how we teach our children, to be who we want them to be, and to be who they will need to become.

I wanted to discover if there was a universal consensus on what we teach our children, so I crowdsourced the texts for the first and last movements from the internet. In the middle movement there is a text I made out of a famous lesson by the second century Jewish scholar Ben Zoma, in which he asks and answers these questions - Who is wise? Who is strong? Who is rich? Who is honored? I thought it was important that a piece about how children are taught should contain a real lesson.

‘teach your children’ is 25 minutes long and is scored for soprano solo, adult choir, children’s choir, and orchestra.

teach your children words and music by david lang

to make wise decisions to be problem solvers to save money to be kind to respect the power of the word ‘no’ to avoid spending money to follow the crowd to be honest to be brave to behave to write well to save to be investors rather than spenders to be unselfish to be independent to be kind and caring to be early savers to not spend more than what is in their pocket to be empathetic and socially competent to give back to share without forcing to keep their room clean to meditate to love others to do math well to pray to work to love themselves unconditionally to express themselves to question what they read to go green to pick up after themselves to test the waters to love the outdoors to give to charity to both respect and question authority to brush their teeth to save them to be reasonable to lie to laugh at themselves to engage to be financially astute to be grateful to respect boundaries to dress themselves to manage their money to be accepting to do chores to speak up to obtain real knowledge to love reading to be creative

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to live with less to avoid danger to have good posture to truly remember who they are to play to see how consequences follow decisions to stand up for themselves to invest to care about art to love to share to be responsible to swim to hit back to prioritize to look for other helpful people to love everybody to follow the star to save money to use technology in a healthy, responsible way to be optimistic to listen to give by example to ride to identify, label and express their emotions to build a better society to keep their hands to themselves to deal with conflict to learn from your mistakes to walk along a trail to love music to run, hide, fight to be generous to look to live to forgive to make their own good decisions to use less energy to make the sign to ski to cook to nurture the right values to be happy to play by themselves to treat you kindly to be polite and respectful to think about others to succeed to brush, floss and rinse to obey to swear to fill their bucket

to learn to be prepared for tragedy to be financially literate to clean to be thankful to drive to view cultural events to love themselves to be proud of what they can afford to be coachable to take on challenges to bank to care for the environment to respectfully disagree to be safe to scan the background to encourage others to study to apply themselves to love learning to eat healthy to suffer well to tie their shoes in less than a minute to snorkel to be vigilant to donate to charity to love work to handle dangerous scenarios to make friends to respect women to budget to meet a dog to stand up to be culturally thoughtful to love the wilderness to believe to be polite to be diligent workers to tolerate frustration to handle getting lost to be givers to care to seek to eat right to love nature to be benevolent to struggle to link having money with work to be informed to do unto others as you would have them do unto you to stay safe to be more to be patient to count to love the beautiful to avoid distractions to value the health of their precious bodies to have unwavering faith to be afraid of strangers

to accept to be alone to be nice, generous people to cough into their sleeve to be role models to be the positive change we need to see in the world to print to never say their name without permission to do so to write effortlessly to color between the lines

Who is wise?

Tell me (Tell us)

Who is strong?

Tell me (Tell us)

Who is rich?

Tell me (Tell us)

Who is honored?

Tell me (Tell us)

How can we become wise?

How can we become strong?

How can we become rich?

How can we become honored?

Who is wise?

Those who learn from everyone are wise

As they say:

From all my teachers I have grown wise

Who is strong?

Those who control their passions are strong

As they say:

Better to be slow to anger than to be mighty

Who is rich?

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Those who are satisfied with what they have are rich

As they say:

By the labor of your own hands you will be happy

Who is honored?

Those who honor everyone are honored

As they say:

To those who honor me I will give honor Wisdom Strength Wealth

Honor 3.

we are waiting we all are one we live our lives we’re all under the influence we, and no one else, are responsible we are waiting, all of us we have an inconvenient nature we had a good life

we are not all created equal we can learn we are literally running out of everything we cannot go on we live out our lives we live in a changing world we are all, every one of us we are in the midst we need immigrants we can always go further we do not have much we avoid scams we’re all becoming pathological liars we’ve known for years we’re all little cheaters we are already perfect we are still in a difficult climate we actually don’t have a decent theory we seem to like some lies we don’t know we can’t afford a shiny new transport system we all lie we will never save wildlife by killing it we lack humanity we are still missing you we can think about moral values we suppress the truth we cannot control the wind we only learn to pray all the time after we have set about praying some of the time we have provided we are always forgetting we still don’t know we can equate we create our truth we’re all biased we haven’t seen anything yet we’ve always been greedy we are both we don’t really know we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us we have never been openly at war with each other we tend to confine our truth we can repent we are not united we are members of one another we simply have no visibility we are doing an enormous disservice we haven’t seen we all face this doubt we’ve already evaluated we are out of touch with reality we are restless we are actually drawn to people who are real we have become so addicted we all kind of suck we cannot not really know the truth we hate

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we’re here because this is ours we have this piece we are waiting for events beyond you and me we’re all dying we can use our bodies in any way we want we don’t know what happened we are conned we cannot achieve peace we have wrested our independence we may well find what we seek we have made 200 billion pounds available we are seeing with new developments we are rich, because they are poor we have very little idea of what is really going on we’ve all got a death we are bound to submit we need higher, not lower, taxes we can confess we comfortably make we could all benefit from breaking we are surrounded we are quite prone to lying we and our children we need to open up our eyes we are incomplete we are all grieving already we have merely achieved we’re just being controlling we use all of our brain, all of the time we are having the wrong conversation, over and over again we have far too many meetings we don’t pay attention we will never find consensus we only see what we want to see we are beloved, even in our current condition we need vitamins to be healthy we’re living it we want a god who is controllable we should be glad of our job, whatever it is we are not fighting a war on terror we both work on our marriage we can, and must, rely on scientists we have won we also believe every parent and every guardian we are training designers we’re all a little confused we never thought we’d even get this far we have near-limitless supplies of energy we have nothing to fear we have too many opportunities we reconsidered we are not where we need to be we are modern, independent we are sometimes quite successful we all live our lives we were treated very kindly we are doing what we’ve always done we all have lives that are complicated we love

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teachyourchildren part3

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