Скачать или смотреть Cry of the Earth: Soil, Sea, Flame, and Breath

Following an international call for scores, The EcoVoice Project chose ten scores to include for of our Cry of the Earth initiative. These new works, inspired by Laudato Si, received their premieres by the New Earth Ensemble, The EcoVP’s professional vocal ensemble. These new works honor Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which calls on humanity to urgently address the climate crisis.

Soil, Sea, Flame, and Breath, George Dousis

In Soil, Sea, Flame, and Breath, the quiet introspection of Walt Whitman’s A Clear Midnight is transformed into the Earth’s own lament — a cry rising from the stillness, echoing the ecological and spiritual call of Laudato Si’.
Where Whitman’s soul withdraws from books and lessons into silence and stars, this adaptation turns outward: the wounded Earth now speaks in that silence. The familiar rhythmic and lyrical contours of the original are preserved, yet the imagery shifts toward the human traces of greed, haste, and loss.

The closing invocation — “soil, sea, flame, and the breath” — stands as both prayer and remembrance, naming the elements that sustain and suffer with us. This work seeks a dialogue between transcendence and responsibility, between the solitude of Whitman’s soul and the collective conscience of Laudato Si’: a meditation on listening, grief, and care for our common home.