Pomp and Circumstance?

We’re in the middle of graduation season once again, and our own Chorus School graduation and spring concert will take place this Friday night. Generally, I love Elgar’s music, but how and why did his “Pomp and Circumstance” march become the anthem of all graduations? (Except ours, of course.)  I did a little research and found that “Pomp and Circumstance” is supposed to be a military march – it’s celebrating war, for heaven’s sake!  Is that what we’re telling graduates they’re headed for, out in the real world?  I certainly hope not.

The SFGC anthem, for Chorus School graduations, has long been Sommersalm (Summer Psalm, or The Earth Adorned), by Swedish composer Waldemar Ahlen, although it will be changing this year.  (I actually sang this in college – yet another reminder of how musically precocious our Chorus School singers are – and hadn’t heard it again until my first SFGC graduation. A nice surprise.)  It’s really a hymn to the earth, and the message of the song is that we must go out, respect, revere and celebrate nature and the world around us.  No battle field here.

While Sommersalm has been dearly beloved by generations of choristers, this year’s graduation anthem is equally treasured.  I am told the girls will sing Viva la musica, by Michael Praetorius, which has long been a tradition of “night sing,” a favorite activity at SFGC summer music camp. Viva la musica is the most appropriate graduation message we could possibly give our choristers, in my opinion.  Sounds like an excellent marching order for life, even in the real world.

“Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience.”
--George Eliot