The Harvard University Choir recorded a beautiful rendition of a piece I wrote for them called: “An Appalachian Lord's Prayer.”

You are among the first to hear this piece! This recording is not on any CD. I can share, however, because there is such a thing as an mp3. What times we live in, when such things are possible!

What makes it "An Appalachian Lord's Prayer? The words and the melody.

I adapted the traditional Lord's Prayer, adding some Appalachian imagery. Here is the text:

Beloved God, beyond the mountains, hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kin-dom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation.
Deliver us, we pray, from evil, for Thine is the kin-dom,
the power of morning, the sunset glory, now and forever more. Amen.

The music is not "Appalachian" in the sense of "Yahoo!" and/or "Yee-hah!" It's not Bluegrass.

Instead, the tune recalls those beautiful pentatonic Southern folk hymns, such as "The Lone Wild Bird," My Shepherd Will Supply My Need" and "Jerusalem, My Happy Home."

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
October, 2013

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

(The Lord’s Prayer is a Christian text and many of you are not Christian. I'm sharing this message NOT to proselytize but only because I think you might enjoy discovering the thinking behind the composing and, even more, hearing the music, beautifully sung by the Harvard University Choir.)

I love The Lord’s Prayer. I recite it silently every morning in the bathtub. Don’t laugh! For me, my big, beautiful, clawfoot bathtub is a "thin place.”

I love asking that daily bread be given to US, not just to ME. “Give me this day my daily bread” is laughable until we remember how many people seem to watch out only for themselves and how many are without bread.

I love the humility and simplicity of bread. Only bread is requested. Mere bread. No St. André cheese, no Provençal olives, no pesto. No mention of a robust Côtes du Rhône. Those would be mighty nice, but that is not the point.

I love how the word “daily” acknowledges that we are fleshy beings, not wispy spirits, that our tummies will hunger for food for as long as our lungs hunger for air.

The Lord’s Prayer cannot be improved.

Yet perhaps some insights can be gleaned by considering what it might mean when uttered in contexts different than those of our customary lives.

What would the prayer mean if we were starving or if we had superfluous wealth? What would it mean if our livelihood depended upon criminal activity or if we were truly saintly? How does its meaning vary when uttered in a desert, in a jungle, in a poverty-stricken inner city, alone at sea or in a space station slowly circling the globe?

How does The Lord’s Prayer mean in the Appalachian regions of our country, of Ohio?

I tried to imagine answers for that last question when I set to music The Lord’s Prayer, entitling my setting "An Appalachian Lord's Prayer."

I made bold to adapt the words, lacing the verses with elements of the natural world that come to mind when thinking of the Appalachians.

Instead of “Our Father who art in Heaven...” my version begins, "Beloved God, beyond the mountains…”

I augmented the traditional Protestant ending (not found in the Bible) so as to be sung, "the power of morning, the sunset glory.”

I substituted "kin-dom" for "Kingdom" because it seems closer to what Jesus taught: that we are each other's kinfolk and must look out for one another, that we must ‘have our neighbor’s back,’ that we are all God’s kin-folk, that the relationship is that of a child and a loving parent.

“Kin-folk” and “kin-dom” are concepts every Appalachian understands. “Kingdom,” on the other hand, seems alien, ancient, European. Our country began by throwing off a monarchy. Begging for a “kingdom” to “come” seems counter-intuitive to us. “Kin,” on the other hand, feels right.

Here is my “Appalachian” adaptation of the text:

Beloved God, beyond the mountains, hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kin-dom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation.
Deliver us, we pray, from evil, for Thine is the kin-dom,
the power of morning, the sunset glory, now and forever more.

My tune is intended to recall those beautiful pentatonic Southern folk hymns, such as "The Lone Wild Bird," "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,“ “Dunlap Creek” and "Jerusalem, My Happy Home."

To hear An Appalachian Lord's Prayer sung by the Harvard University Choir, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.