Lo Yisa Goy

In Stacy Garrop’s inspired hands, divisi mixed chorus provides a rich palette of texture and color. Her setting intermingles three versions of the Hebrew folk tune, taking artistic advantage of contrasts between solo and tutti, homophony and grand antiphony, divisi men and divisi women, and the gradual braiding and unbraiding of Hebrew and English texts. LO YISA GOY is the explicitly anti-war Scriptural text better-known in its English translation that begins, “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares... nation shall not lift up a sword against nation.”