A Prayer For Peace

Instrumentation

String quartet (string orchestra)
String trio (violin, viola, bass)
Fliute, bassoon, bass
Clarinet quartet
Woodwind quintet

Duration

5 1/2 minutes

Composed

2001

Program Notes

When great tragedies unfold...people react in individual manners.

I sat in shock watching the surreal story unfold on television. I watched along with much of the world as the Word Trade Center Towers burned and then collapsed. I watched the flaming hole in the side of the Pentagon in horror. I saw thousands of people die before my eyes.

I sat numb for a week, far from the United States, alone in my apartment in Oxford, where I had gone to compose a cello concerto. My mind was far from the concerto, far from music. I tried to put pen to paper but nothing happened.<

It was after a week of numbness that my feelings found their voice…this composition…this prayer. Once I began composing it seemed to flow from my pen, as naturally as the feelings that surged through my body. It had to be born.

I offer this composition as my personal prayer…a prayer for a peaceful world...a world where there is no place for hatred or violence…a world in which religions recognize the overwhelming similarities that far overshadow their minor differences.

When great tragedies unfold…people react in individual manners. This is my reaction.

– Terry Vosbein Oxford, England September 2001

“...a response that was far less saccharine than most in 2001 with its subtle conjunct themes, conveying a sadness that went beyond conspicuous flows of tears.” – San Jose Mercury News