This setting of Psalm 137, one of the most popular psalms to set to music for concert and popular musicians alike, speaks to these themes in an outpouring of grief for a distant homeland. European composers and church musicians have often used Latin and liturgical texts as a sort of lingua franca. In this piece, the dead language becomes the "babble" of Babylon, like a ghost of a dead religion or culture. This setting comes from a longer work, Babylon for choir and percussion, which uses sacred texts like this psalm and texts from American folk music to express a journey through these themes.
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