SATB Chorus and Piano

Recommended for: High School and Older

Optional Instrumentation: Piano, glockenspiel, woodblock, dumbek, gong, bass drum, chinese cymbals, hi-hat, tambourine, shaker, claves, cowbell

“Since writing Forever Is My Song in 2011 for the North Carolina All-State Middle School Honor Chorus, I have updated the vocal score and included new instrumental parts. This final version was created in 2013 for the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.

In this work, the second in a series of songs based on the poetry of Eric Gamalinda,[1] the instruments and voices represent the sounds of the kulintang. Kulintang is a traditional form of music, found in southern Polynesia, which uses various sized gongs. Smaller gongs are laid in a row and played horizontally, accompanied by larger suspended gongs and drums.

I wrote this piece to create a sense of elastic sonorities that ring with similar timbres to the kulintang. The voices transform vowels of the words to make the sounds of gongs and cymbals as though they were ringing through time. The harmonies are based on various extended pentatonic scales mixed with western harmonies. The rhythm should remain constant and thriving. The clanging of cymbals, gongs and blocks against a driving piano and voices that stack and build with resonance and even a bit of distortion, which creates the sounds of the overtones, should portray a feeling of the need to exist.” – Francisco J. Núñez

“The kulintang is a potent cultural symbol in the Philippines. It is native to the southern island of Mindanao among indigenous peoples who have constantly been subjected to war (from the Spanish era to the present day), poverty, and displacement – and their culture is being threatened out of existence. The idea of children singing about the kulintang, therefore, is a very significant symbol: innocence and hope in the face of sorrow and war. I hope I conveyed those emotions in these lines.” – Eric Gamalinda

Performance Time: 5 minutes

When others grow old

I will always grow young

And my tender soul

Will sing like the kulintang

When they talk of war

I will sing my praise of love

They say no but I say yes

They say yin and I say yang

In a time of orphans

I remember how my mother sang

And in the dead of night

How bright the music rang

When all is weakened by the pang

Of loss, I am made of metal,

My voice as strong

As the brass gong’s clang

I will not disappear

I will always be here

My world is my poem

And forever is my song

For I am the future

And I have just begun