He leads me beside quiet waters

By Emily, aged 14 from Farnborough Hill

Music recording sent via email

My art piece is a piano piece based on the prompt of ‘sacred spaces’ I chose this theme because I was interested in finding inspiration in the holy spaces around me. I was inspired by both water and my passion for music, which motivated me to represent the prompt through the piano. Additionally, in the Bible, water is used to represent eternal life and purification, and the sacred ceremony of Baptism includes using water to cleanse a person of their sins.

I decided to name my piece ‘He leads me beside quiet waters’ after the bible quote from Psalms 23:3. I chose this name because I believe it represents both my piece and the sacred space I wish to portray in it, and due to the fact that it shows that even when times can be hard, God will lead us into calm.

In my piece, I used broken chords to replicate waves as well as plagal cadances in the left hand, which are typically used in religious music and sometimes referred to as the amen cadance). I also used modulations to represent how the water is never the same and how quickly it can change from calm to stormy. However, I used major chords at the end of the piece to show that God always guides us towards peace and salvation in the end.