"A Mother's Carol" - Text, Program Note and Composer Biography

A Mother’s Carol

Her breath returned after pain of birth,
She awkwardly rests him on her knee.
An angel told her of peace on earth;
This new mother’s song could only be:
“Magnificat!
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
On wings of praise my soul flies free.”

A mother’s carol, a baby’s cry:
What sorrow and joy they both express.
If she had known how her son would die,
Would Mary have said so firm a “Yes?”
Magnificat!
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
Let all creation say no less.

For each of us comes a time of choice--
To answer the call or turn away.
And if today you may hear that voice,
May you find the grace to boldly say,
“Magnificat!
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
May peace be born through me today.”
- Clay Zambo

A Mother’s Carol
While on a trip to France my collaborator, Clay Zambo, visited one particular church whose décor he wryly described as “all glitter, all the time – clearly designed to entertain the illiterate congregants of the era in which it was constructed.”

But on his way out, a friend pointed to a little alcove where there hung an utterly human portrait of Mary and the baby Jesus. He was so struck by the image of the new mother that he immediately wrote the poem that evolved into A Mother’s Carol – a meditation on the idea that even in the most ordinary human circumstances one can find the divine.
- Scott Ethier

Scott Ethier is a composer and pianist who writes and performs concert works, musical theater, and jazz. His musical Rosa Parks (book and lyrics by Jeff Hughes) was commissioned by Theaterworks/USA and kicks off a tour of the United States at New York City’s Town Hall in February of 2009. In 2002, Scott was named composer-in-residence of the Macon Symphony Orchestra thanks to the American Composers Forum’s Continental Harmony Program. Scott has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a participant in the Nautilus Music Theater/New Dramatists Composer-Librettists Studio. He was named a Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow in 2005-6, and is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He studied composition with Larry Bell, Richard Danielpour, and David del Tredici.