Caroline Shaw's NARROW SEA and Longing for the New Creation

by Noah Mennenga

Caroline Shaw is quickly rising in her status as a composer, especially since becoming the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music at the age of 30. She is even featured in The Atlantic’s March 2021 issue, showing the recognition she’s gaining outside of the classical world. Shaw’s latest album brings together Sō Percussion, Dawn Upshaw (Soprano), and Gil Kalish (Piano) to perform two works: Narrow Sea (2017) and Taxidermy (2012).

Narrow Sea (Nonesuch Records, 2021), helps listeners long for another world that is free from darkness, strife, and suffering; in the liner notes, Shaw dedicates this piece to “all humans seeking safe refuge.” Each of the five movements feature “a new melodic setting of a text from The Sacred Harp, a collection of shape-note hymns first published in the 19th century.” Shape-note singing allows congregations and social groups to learn singing through the association of specific notes with unique shapes – a tradition with roots in New England. Shaw chooses texts that have two specific traits in common: they all reference water – for Shaw, a representation of what lies between our world and the next – and they all look to heaven for rest and safety.

One sets a text from Joseph Bever’s Christian Songster, 1858, to music. The text begins:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger

While journeying through this world of woe

Yet there’s no sickness, toil or danger

In that bright world to which I go 

Though the speaker is traveling to a bright world with no sickness or danger, the present world is still full of woe and strife. The speaker elaborates on this reality in the third stanza: 

I know dark clouds will gather over me

I know my way is rough and steep

Yet beauteous fields lie just before me

There will be suffering in this world; it’s inevitable. There will be times when the way is “rough and steep.” We find ourselves asking the same questions as the Psalmist in Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” We sometimes feel that we’re walking through the “valley of the shadow of death” as described in Psalm 23. However, the only thing that can possibly keep us moving forward in hope underneath the dark clouds is clinging to the reality of where we’re going. In the Christian perspective, we’re heading toward a world – a life beyond the pain we currently see – where none of that darkness exists; we’re heading toward the “beauteous fields” that lie before us.

Part Two of Narrow Sea uses text written by Isaac Watts in 1707: 

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

Stand dressed in living green

While Jordan rolled between

While Jordan rolled between

There everlasting spring abides

And never withering flowers

Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heavenly land from ours 

Just as the flood between us and the new world swells and roars, the percussion and background vocal lines in Part Two swirl around, never allowing listeners to fully rest. For now, we’re separated from the “sweet fields” that are “dressed in living green.” Though the sea is narrow, we are still standing on its banks while gazing to the other side, longing to experience the true rest found there. The text in Part Four emphasizes our waiting:

On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand

And cast a wishful eye

To Canaan’s fair and happy land

Where my possessions lie 

However, we – the poor wayfaring strangers – won’t “cast a wishful eye” forever. We will be there, one day. 

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’” -Revelation 21:1-4

As we walk through this life, which is all too often marked by pain, loss, and suffering, it may be wise to keep Narrow Sea close at hand as a companion. The 18th and 19th century texts, coupled with Shaw’s musical setting, remind us that we are, in fact, heading toward rest, safety, and a true home in the New Heaven and the New Earth. We know where our true home lies, so we can walk through life faithfully following the only One who will satisfy us, make all the sad things come untrue, and make everything new. We are not to treat this as escapist theology, lest we ignore and abuse the world that God has given us. Rather, this promise empowers us, baptizing our imaginations and fueling our daily perseverance with its eternal perspective.

Praise God, that through Jesus Christ we will one day enter the New Creation to dwell perfectly with God. And so, we press on toward the “beauteous fields” where “everlasting spring abides,” despite the darkness of our present lives.

by Noah Mennenga