"What Do You Think I Fought For At Omaha Beach" performed by the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers

Note: A professionally recorded, multiple-angle video of this was shot and will be available on DVD from the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers at a later date. Visit MelissaDunphy.com for more info.

Melissa Dunphy's new composition "What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?" was selected as the winning work for the 2010 Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition. The Philadelphia-based composer's choral work sets excerpts of public testimony given by a WWII veteran before the Maine Senate in a hearing to discuss the Marriage Equality Bill.

"What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?" was performed on May 29, 2010, at Grace and Holy Trinity in Kansas City, MO and First Presbyterian Church in Lawrence, KS. This video was shot during the performance at Grace and Holy Trinity in Kansas City, MO.

The piece was selected from a pool of over 100 submissions, from over 70 composers, hailing from 10 different countries. In choosing the work from a narrowed-down, committee-selected pool of nine finalists, music director and conductor Simon Carrington gave his reasoning behind selecting Dunphy's work as the winner. "There were plenty of excellent pieces in the sweet-sounding modern idiom which SCCS would make very beautiful, but the strongest (and most individual) piece was Melissa Dunphy's What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? -- a bold and highly effective setting of a thought-provoking text."

PHILLIP SPOONER'S TESTIMONY (excerpted) and TEXT FOR WHAT DO YOU THINK I FOUGHT FOR AT OMAHA BEACH?

Good morning, committee. My name is Phillip Spooner and I live at 5 Graham Street in Biddeford. I am 86 years old and a lifetime Republican and an active VFW chaplain ... I was born on a potato farm north of Caribou and Perham, where I was raised to believe that all men are created equal, and I've never forgotten that.

I served in the U.S. Army, 1942-1945 ... I worked with every outfit over there, including Patton's Third Army. I saw action in all five major battles in Europe... I was in the liberation of Paris.

(I have seen much, so much blood and guts, so much suffering, much sacrifice.)

I am here today because of a conversation I had last June when I was voting. A woman ... asked me, "Do you believe in equality for gay and lesbian people?" I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, "What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?"

For freedom and equality. These are the values that make America a great nation, one worth dying for.

My wife and I did not raise four sons with the idea that our gay son would be left out. We raised them all to be hard-working, proud, and loyal Americans and they all did good.

A YouTube clip of Spooner's testimony can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrEbJBFWIPk

Category:

Music

Tags:

• marriage
• equality
• maine
• phillip
• spooner
• gay
• rights
• omaha
• beach
• testimony
• choir
• simon
• carrington
• chamber
• singers

[IUFTR]

This is an example of all-too-typical choral singing today. Sound, yes, but to heck with the message - no intelligible text. Resonant rooms such as this cover a multitude of sins (musical) and hide any meaning.

Can't understand a word.

[leviathant]

@IUFTR Consider the setting as well as the means of recording - what you're hearing in this is the audio from a video camera, which often over-compresses the sound in a room to "help" even out audio. This is also the debut performance. Regardless - you can hear a very nicely recorded rendition on iTunes & InstantEncore - recorded with professional equipment in a church in Lawrence, KS a few days later. The clarity is much improved, as is the stereo separation. Thanks for the comment!

[calspace]

Can we get the words added to this page? I can never understand the lyrics in this type of singing, and being able to follow along helps immensely with my enjoyment of the performance.

Comprehensible or not, I love this idea. Thanks to the person who created it and those who performed it.

[leviathant]

@calspace If you expand the info (just under the video) it expands and you can read along with the words. I didn't have time to annotate this one before putting it online last night

[andrewoconnorblue]

This is utterly gorgeous.

[mormolyke]

@calspace Hi - composer Melissa Dunphy here. An annotated video from the recording session is available on my channel (click my username). I self-publish, and I'm currently working on a whizz-bang website for my publishing company, but if you or anyone you know is interested in performing the piece, please have them contact me at contact [at] melissadunphy [dot] com in the meantime.

Thanks so much!

[calspace]

@leviathant I see that, but the description says that the work comes from "excerpts of public testimony."

In addition to the CD, consider selling the video on iTunes.

Is the piece available for licensing? My mother is friends with someone on the board of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and I'd love to see that performed live here.

[taloisi]

beautiful!