God Bless the Young Folk (duet) – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: W. E. B. Du Bois

Instrumentation: mezzo-soprano, baritone, piano

Duration: Approx. 3

Date Written:  2008

Composer’s note: 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 thickening of texture culminates in a triumphant celebration of those young folk “who open up the hidden ways” – “their souls hunger after God. It is also available for SATB and piano.

text

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. Du Bois