‘I let her spirit guide me’

Robert and Sylvia Ray pay tribute to their mothers in ‘Gospel Requiem’

By Chris King

Of the St. Louis American

Robert Ray and Sylvia Dunn Ray will honor their mothers only in memory this coming Mother’s Day, but this past Sunday they paid tribute to the late Artie Ray and Dolly Dunn in a way that was deeply personal, openly public and highly musical.

With Robert’s brother (and Artie’s son) Marlin Ray on drums, and backed by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra’s IN UNISON Chorus (which Robert directs), they premiered an early version of Robert’s new composition, “Gospel Requiem” at St. Paul AME, the home church of Artie Ray.

“She was a great mother, a real inspiration, and a great singer,” Robert said of his mother, who passed in October 2005 on the verge of her 80th birthday.

Robert already had composed “Gospel Mass” and “Gospel Magnificat” when his mother died, and within a year of her passing he decided to compose “Gospel Requiem” and dedicate it to her.

He chose to use a blend of traditional and nontraditional texts for the lyrics. He wanted to use pieces of scripture that had been precious to his mother and even an anonymous poem that had appeared on her funeral program, “If You Could See Me Now.”

Like many children with devout mothers, Robert grew up instructed by Proverbs 3:5-6, which teaches:

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

“That’s the text I most remember from my mother and from church, growing up,” Robert said.

“My mother always said, ‘Trust in God, lean heavily on Him.’ Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. And when I didn’t, I screwed it up.”

Robert’s sister Phyllis Jackson heard her mother’s voice when those lines were sung on Sunday.

“That’s a scripture she put in front of me since childhood, through adulthood,” Phyllis said - “knowing that God is in control.”

Robert’s brother Marlin, who played drums at the premiere, said he “recognized a lot of the things my mother taught all of us growing up” in the requiem.

“It was a true testimony to her - it was just her will, so to speak,” Marlin said. “It was difficult to perform it and live it at the same time, but we got through it somehow.”

In his composition, Robert also leans on traditional liturgical texts, such as the Sanctus (“Holy, Holy, Holy”). In worship services, the Sanctus typically is said or sung with the eucharistic prayer, the consecration of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Thus far, Robert has composed and conducted four movements of his requiem. He had intended to complete the piece with two more movements, which would have included a return to traditional liturgical texts for the conclusion, but the dynamics of the premiere changed his mind.

“At the end of the last movement we performed, ‘If You Could See Me Now,’ we were all just wiped out. To come back and do something classical after that, I don’t think I can do it,” Robert said.

His revised intention is to keep that song as the conclusion and write just one more movement into the composition earlier in the piece. This movement will be based on a scripture that was important to Sylvia’s mother, the late Dolly Dunn, who died of cancer in February at the age of 80.

When Dolly died just two months before the premiere, Robert decided to include his wife’s mother in the dedication to “Gospel Requiem.”

“We’ve been married 35 years this June, and our parents were a very significant part of our relationship,” said Sylvia Ray, a world-traveling musician in her own right who was lead vocal soloist for Sunday’s premiere.

“They were parents for both of us - our other mothers. They were more than in-laws. They were so close to each other, so close to us.”

Sylvia said the mothers drew particularly close after their husbands, Robert Ray Sr. and Lloyd Dunn, passed.

“As widows, they really bonded,” Sylvia said. “Then, after Robert’s mother died, my mom fell into a deep depression. She’d say, ‘They’ve left me.’”

Sylvia’s mother also was a singer and “resident historian of old songs” she grew up singing in the church in Mississippi. Sylvia has her mother’s old Bible now and has been studying it, to find the scripture Robert needs to complete “Gospel Requiem.”

“There are a lot of scriptures she has highlit,” Sylvia said, “and she used to quote from the Bible so much. I need to really think about it to see if I can remember.”

And so the two mothers of these two great lovers and musicians will be joined forever in the immortality of song.

“The nature of a requiem is solemn,” Robert said, but given the beloved subjects, his composition couldn’t help but take on elements of joy.

“I knew my mom, what she was like, and as I wrote, I would think about her life, everything she was, and I let her spirit guide me.”