This is inspired, at least in part, by brother Josh's persistent challenge to us all to get out another "S2L2A&A" list: songs to listed to again and again. I don’t have a full list together for this year yet, but I think I'd like to start it with a favorite song from Kirsten's Jubilate Choir days, music that I still like to turn to now and again, eight years later. The song is Adiemus by Karl Jenkins, the lead part of a full album and the premise for a beautiful choral concert called Songs of Sanctuary. What makes Jenkins work especially unique is that it's all done in a pseudo=Latin with no specific meaning. The first lines, for instance, are:
Ari adiemus late
Ari adiemus da
Ari a enatus late adua.
It turns out the title can be roughly translated as "We will draw near" in Latin, but Jenkins claimed not to have known this. Anyway, it's musically rich, solemn, dramatic, full of crescendo and sanctuary but also, at least for me all these years, intriguing in how it seems to beg for more meaning. So this year I finally decided to give the song my own words. In the process, arbitrarily or not, I have turned to the well known "bless you keep you" benediction, enhanced with one of my favorite words, Immanuel, a word worth repeating, again and again. And yes, the descant remains: we will draw near.
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