29SEP2025 – Quote of the Day

A LOST CHORD

Seated one day at the Organ,

I was weary and ill at ease,

And my fingers wandered idly

Over the noisy keys.

 

I do not know what I was playing,

Or what I was dreaming then;

But I struck one chord of music,

Like the sound of a great Amen.

 

It flooded the crimson twilight

Like the close of an Angel’s Psalm,

And it lay on my fevered spirit

With a touch of infinite calm.

 

It quieted pain and sorrow,

Like love overcoming strife;

It seemed the harmonious echo

From our discordant life.

 

It linked all perplexed meanings

Into one perfect peace,

And trembled away into silence

As if it were loth to cease.

 

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,

That one lost chord divine,

Which came from the soul of the Organ,

And entered into mine.

 

It may be that Death’s bright angel

Will speak in that chord again,–

It may be that only in Heaven

I shall hear that grand Amen.

Adelaide Anne Procter

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Ed Brault
Ed Brault
10 months ago

Geoffery Lewis’ Celestial Navigations “The Hunchback”.
https://youtu.be/_w9BIueWrxk?list=RD_w9BIueWrxk

Tregonsee314
Tregonsee314
10 months ago
Reply to  photog

It is an actual poem then set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Chord . It was famous in the late Victorian era and well known even into the Teens and Twenties. Sullivans arrangement of it is particularly haunting.

Tregonsee314
Tregonsee314
10 months ago
Reply to  photog

And I found a 4 part mens performance (By the Vocal Majority a Barbershop chorus here singing with an organ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHTaTMYRYRA . I’ve sung a 4 part SATB arrangement in the past so this seems similar from my dim memories, but these gentleman’s execution exceeds any chorus I’ve ever been in…