The road home - Stephen Paulus

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The road home - Stephen Paulus
Sung by ‘Viva la Musica’, East Midlands Chamber Choir
📶https://www.vivalamusica.org.uk/
(soprano solo - Susan Elliott)
Recorded live in Bishop Street Methodist Church – Saturday 18th March 2023
Conducted by Simon Lumby📶https://www.simonlumby.co.uk/

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Stephen Paulus was always moved by the spirit of collaboration he experienced with his peers and neighbours in Minnesota. A particularly fruitful collaboration was with Michael Dennis Browne, who provided texts for at least sixteen Paulus compositions. The road home sets Browne’s text to the tune ‘Prospect’, an American shape-note hymn tune compiled in Southern Harmony in 1835.

Paulus made this arrangement for The Dale Warland Singers in 2002. It is hard not to be moved by this well-loved piece, which somehow carries just as much emotion as a spiritual such as Deep river. Fittingly, this hymn has been sung many times in services and celebrations of the life of a composer who sadly died during the preparation of this piece’s first recording in 2014.

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Text:

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There's a way, there's a road
That will lead me home

After wind, after rain
When the dark is done
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day
Through the air there's a calling
From far away
There's a voice I can hear
That will lead me home

Rise up, follow me
Come away, is the call
With the love in your heart
As the only song
There is no such beauty
As where you belong
Rise up, follow me
I will lead you home