Posted on Tuesday, October 02, 2018
LC professor’s 7th symphony celebrates civility
In today’s world marked with divisiveness and discord, Lee Johnson feels there is no better time for the release of his “Civility” symphony No. 7.
“I actually wrote the piece in the early 2000s, but it is still so relevant today,” said Johnson, Coordinator of the Digital Creative Media and Film Program and Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Music. “Interestingly enough, civility is one of the core values of LaGrange College and is a cornerstone of who we are as an institution.”
An all-digital release, “Civility” is now available worldwide on download and streaming services.
Johnson said he was approached by the nonprofit Art Reach Foundation in 2002 to go to Bosnia and Northern Ireland to learn about each country’s conflicts. Art Reach utilizes arts therapies to work with the growth and development of children who have experienced the traumatic effects of war, violence and/or natural disaster.
“I was invited to be a guest of two very troubled parts of the world,” he said. “Both were internationally known places of strife and both were looking for new ways to think about old problems.”
Johnson spoke to government officials, activists, artists and residents, and was discouraged by what he found. He became convinced that the only lasting solution to those bloody conflicts would be a radical change of heart that reaches all factions.
“I looked to the center of human morality for solutions rather than go to the edges,” he writes in the CD’s liner notes. “So often, the edges were associated with retaliatory behavior and vengeance. I found that the center, or the essence of morality, is best known as the ethic of reciprocity and that the texts on this subject spanned the ages, religions, governments, philosophies and cultural traditions.”
This became the message of “Civility,” he said.
Later, when Johnson visited the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, he was introduced to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On Dec. 10, 1948, in Paris, the United Nations General Assembly declared the document a standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations.
The UDHR would become an essential element in “Civility,” and Johnson began to seek the appropriate person to read it, a person with the appropriate moral authority. He was astonished when, after an early performance of the piece at the Carter Center in Atlanta, former President Jimmy Carter offered to be that person.
“I was stunned by his generosity and humbled by his commitment to the UDHR,” Johnson said. “He is completely at home with this subject and continues to make speaking to human rights issues around the world a significant part of his life’s work.”
President Carter said he was honored to be a part of the “Civility” project.
“This is an important composition,” Carter said. “We live in a difficult and complicated world, in which peace and human rights are a matter of survival. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the conventions that derive from it serve as a beacon to a future of personal security, political freedom and social justice. This project brings that beacon into closer view and brings hope and inspiration to all who hear it.”
Category: Arts and Culture, Faculty, Academics, College
Keywords: Lee Johnson Jimmy Carter symphony civility
