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I cry for peace.
Where is peace?
Bring me peace.
About five years ago, Barbara Garrett had completed two recitals in efforts to get her name out as a composer. A survivor of violence asked Garrett if she had considered writing a requiem in honor of those who had experienced violence, though Garrett was already immersed in composing for a third recital.
“It was something I knew I had to do,” Independence resident Garrett says of her immediate response when she received the survivor’s note and request. “The next day, I started writing it, which is totally unusual. I usually think about what I’m going to write, and it literally started pouring out of me. I held on for the ride.”
Ten months, 12 languages and 17 sections later, the symphonic work “Requiem for Broken Souls” was completed. A requiem, by definition, is a musical composition in honor of the dead. While Garrett’s requiem isn’t religious in nature, she says, it’s based on the words of a Mass with sections like Dies Irae, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei.
Garrett says she’s not a survivor of violence and credits the inspiration behind “Requiem for Broken Souls” to a higher power.
“It depends on what your beliefs are, but I’m totally clear it came from God,” she says. “I just hate mentioning that because different people believe different things. For me, it was more of Him speaking through me.”
A full-time legal administrative assistant at Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP in Kansas City, Garrett earned a master’s degree in composition from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Writing takes place at all hours and places of the day, with Garrett once scribbling ideas on an envelope while standing in a lunch line. She’ll discuss her composing with anyone and everyone, including restaurant waiters and on a recent blind date.
Garrett describes herself as an empathic person who understands other peoples’ state of mind and emotions – she used to be able to stand in crowds, “but now it’s too much.”
“The more I’ve opened myself up to others, the less I can be around large crowds,” she says. “Any time you open up to that world, it just opens up your emotions, and I was way more emotional about everything – I cried easier.”
As a result, Battered Souls Advocates was incorporated as a charitable organization on Sept. 1, 2005. Garrett’s requiem premiered in November 2006 with about 80 audience members, and two years later, the charity was re-established as a nonprofit known as Artistic Advocates for Healing.
I cry for peace.
Where is peace?
Bring me peace.
About five years ago, Barbara Garrett had completed two recitals in efforts to get her name out as a composer. A survivor of violence asked Garrett if she had considered writing a requiem in honor of those who had experienced violence, though Garrett was already immersed in composing for a third recital.
“It was something I knew I had to do,” Independence resident Garrett says of her immediate response when she received the survivor’s note and request. “The next day, I started writing it, which is totally unusual. I usually think about what I’m going to write, and it literally started pouring out of me. I held on for the ride.”
Ten months, 12 languages and 17 sections later, the symphonic work “Requiem for Broken Souls” was completed. A requiem, by definition, is a musical composition in honor of the dead. While Garrett’s requiem isn’t religious in nature, she says, it’s based on the words of a Mass with sections like Dies Irae, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei.
Garrett says she’s not a survivor of violence and credits the inspiration behind “Requiem for Broken Souls” to a higher power.
“It depends on what your beliefs are, but I’m totally clear it came from God,” she says. “I just hate mentioning that because different people believe different things. For me, it was more of Him speaking through me.”
A full-time legal administrative assistant at Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP in Kansas City, Garrett earned a master’s degree in composition from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Writing takes place at all hours and places of the day, with Garrett once scribbling ideas on an envelope while standing in a lunch line. She’ll discuss her composing with anyone and everyone, including restaurant waiters and on a recent blind date.
Garrett describes herself as an empathic person who understands other peoples’ state of mind and emotions – she used to be able to stand in crowds, “but now it’s too much.”
“The more I’ve opened myself up to others, the less I can be around large crowds,” she says. “Any time you open up to that world, it just opens up your emotions, and I was way more emotional about everything – I cried easier.”
As a result, Battered Souls Advocates was incorporated as a charitable organization on Sept. 1, 2005. Garrett’s requiem premiered in November 2006 with about 80 audience members, and two years later, the charity was re-established as a nonprofit known as Artistic Advocates for Healing.
Any monetary contributions went toward the requiem’s rental fees and performance rates, Garrett says.
“The amount of pay I got is probably equivalent to 5 cents for every 24 hours I spent – I walked and breathed this, even when I was at work,” she says.
The requiem revisions are ongoing, Garrett says, with its next performance scheduled in March 2010 in Columbia, Mo. She’s also immersed in writing a children’s opera – “a fairytale-like, light-hearted look at violence and abuse” – that will premiere in 2011 or 2012, Garrett says.
On her most difficult days, Garrett listens to the requiem, seeking comfort in her own work of art. Its last movement, Pax (Latin for “peace”), contains sections “where it just blows my mind – and I wrote it,” Garrett says.
“If I’m having a really hard day, by the time I get to Pax, it’s gone,” she says. “It takes you to where you are.”
“Let no more voices cry out in anger/Let no more souls be added to the broken column/Let fear and panic be banished, freedom found and innocence and trust restored.”
After the narrator’s opening words in Pax, the chime strikes 12 times, combined with musical material and voices of the previous movements – this ending, Garrett says, signifies a coexistence within the context of peace.
Christy Hodina, a Roeland Park, Kan., resident who works with Garrett, became involved in consulting on Garrett’s requiem composition after the two women shared a conversation one day.
Hodina also was able to provide Garrett with a resource in creativity: She is a survivor of domestic abuse herself.
“It was kind of a multilevel thing,” says Hodina, who also majored in music at college. “At first, it was just strictly listening to the music for the music’s sake, and the more I listened to it, it brought out the memories and helped me feel more peaceful with the whole situation.”
Music and other creative arts allow those who’ve experienced similar hardships to express their feelings together, Hodina says. Though listening to the requiem once provided her peace, Hodina says she’s now at a strong point in life. In a sense, she’s somewhat moved on, as she is now working with Garrett on composing the children’s opera.
“It has a counseling effect and through word of mouth, victims and family members of victims can come together and help each other through shared situations,” Hodina says. “Music has a calming effect on a majority of people, and it tends to help you relax, even though you’re going through a difficult situation.”
For more information about Artistic Advocates for Healing, visit artisticadvocatesforhealing.com.
