This Is My Quarantine Song


thisismysongSMALL

Click on the picture above to watch the movie

I do not remember how I came across this song but once I heard it, it stuck in my head. So, I started searching on the internet. It was originally written by Jean Sibelius as part of his symphonic poem "Finlandia" written in 1899/1900.

In 1934, an American poet,
Lloyd Stone, wrote the first two stanzas for this melody. The third one was added by theologician Georgia Elma Harkness:

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
may peace abound where strife has raged so long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.


I find the lyrics absolutely marvelous and moving. This fact contributed to increase my interest for this song.

I found videos of performances and following this one I transcribed it in A major.

I re-harmonized it a little bit and decided to record myself playing it.
Once I recorded it, both as video and MIDI performance, I orchestrated it with a few sounds from
Omnisphere , Keyscape and Vienna Symphonic library, using my performance at the piano for it.
All this work was possible because of the quarantine we are going through at the moment and that is why I named it this way.