This track is available for purchase on CD Baby here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/erikpetermortensen3

Will also be part of an upcoming album release in Jan, 2014 - "Sacred Music in the English Style".

Erik-Peter Mortensen’s “Supplication for the Holocaust” prayer adapted from and inspired by “Prayer for the Six Million:” – last in a series of prayers from “Z’CHOR – REMEMBER – A Holocaust Prayer – In Memory – Written by a Holocaust Survivor”

Prayer for the Six Million:

Almighty God, remember the six million people that were gassed, killed, drowned, burned alive, tortured, beaten or frozen to death. In our hearts, their sacred memory will last forever and ever. Amen.
God of our Fathers, let the ashes of the children incinerated in Auschwitz, the rivers of blood spilled at Babbi Yar or Majdanek, be a warning to mankind that hatred is destructive, violence is contagious, while man has an unlimited capacity for cruelty. For our own sake and for the sake of our children, we have to be our brother's keeper.
Almighty God, fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares . . . nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Man shall not lift weapon against man, and shall kill no more. Amen.

“Supplication for the Holocaust” text:

Almighty God,

Call to remembrance the number twenty-six million,
The number of them that died in the Great Holocaust.

For their sake, and ours,

“fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah:
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares…
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore.
Man shall not lift weapon against man,
And shall kill no more!”

Amen.
___________________

Research:

Informational excerpts below are from the http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1677.html web page as published on 4/30/2012.

The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews — two thirds of the total European Jewish population, and two-fifths of the Jews in the entire world — but also millions of other victims, by the Nazi regime and its collaborators under Adolf Hitler.

While the Jews were the primary target, there were many other ethnic, secular, religious, and national groups that suffered during the Holocaust, including Poles, Czechs, Greeks, Gypsies, Serbs, Ukranians, and Russians, as well as homosexuals, mentally and physically handicapped persons, trade unionists, prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, and uncounted others. All were targeted because of their perceived "racial inferiority."

Current estimates, based on Nazi war records and official government documents from various countries, place the death toll of the Holocaust at anywhere from 10 million (a conservative figure) to 26 million people.

Erik-Peter chose to musically set the figure “26 million” not because it is necessarily factually accurate, but because it represents an unfathomably large number of exterminated victims, linked together as a chain of humanity, brothers and sisters in death, across nations, religions, and ideologies. When one group of our human brothers is afflicted, we are all afflicted as we are all connected to each other!

Production:

Recorded, edited and mixed at Papagena Productions, New York

Performers:

Emily Speer, soprano
Emily Speer, alto
Edwin Santayana, tenor
Erik-Peter Mortensen, bass

Follow Erik-Peter on Facebook!

www.facebook.com/NYTroubador


Supplication for the Holocaust

Hi, My name is Erik-Peter Mortensen (aka Erik or EP).  I've been singing professionally at the Met & City Opera's since 9, as well as in many professional choirs through the present.  I have a serious love for Early and Classical music and wish to make its appeal reach out to a much vaster audience, either through fusing it with existing styles, creating new styles, or promulgating it through films & games.

I'm currently studying for my Master Certificate in Orchestration for Film and TV, and I'll be posting more of my work right here as my studies continue and I go back to remaster previous work.

If anyone has cool collaboration ideas, please feel free to reach out to me! :-)