A performance of "Take Him, Earth" (Stucky) by the Festival Chorus and Orchestra (Craig Jessop, conductor) during the 2013 ACDA National Conference in Dallas, Texas.

FROM GUEST CURATOR MALCOLM J. MERRIWEATHER

Take Him, Earth was commissioned for the national conference of the American Choral Directors Association in Dallas, Texas, in 2013. The work honors President John F. Kennedy and commemorates the 50th anniversary of his tragic assassination. Composer Steven Stucky describes how he found texts for this tribute: …I assembled a group of texts that are associated with him in some way, but that also stand alone as a more general eulogy. As a refrain, there are a few lines from the early Christian burial hymn that begins ‘Take him, Earth, for cherishing’—lines that were earlier set to music by Herbert Howells in his classic motet commissioned for

Kennedy’s memorial service in 1963. The lines of Aeschylus “Drop, drop — in our sleep, upon the heart sorrow falls” from Agamemnon were quoted by Robert F. Kennedy upon the death of Dr. Martin Luther King in April 1968. The celebrated “When he shall die, cut him out in little stars” from Act III of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was cited by RFK a few months after his brother’s murder.

– Malcolm J. Merriweather