Sojourn for SATB choir and four violins, text by Albert Einstein from his essay "The World as I see it"

first performed October 6, 2007 at the inauguration of Stephen Emerson as President of Haverford College.

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.

But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people - first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

Albert Einstein, from his essay, “The World as I See it” (Mein Weltbild, 1931) as translated by the American Institute of Physics, <http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm>, used with permission.