Description

Voicing: SSA choir, 4-hand piano, large frame/buffalo drum, finger cymbals, suspended cymbal.

Level: 4

Duration: 5:20

To see perusal score, please contact Jocelyn.

Already a favorite among college, high school, and festival women’s choirs, “Moon Goddess” is a tenacious, ferocious and distinctly feminine anthem of praise to the goddess Inanna. The text was written by Enheduanna, Adapted by Jocelyn Hagen, based on adaptations by Aliki and Willis Barnstone, from William W. Hallo and J. J. A. van Dijk, The Exaltation of Inanna (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), the FIRST writer, male or female, in history whose name and work have been preserved.

In 2016, the Wenzhou Female Choir from China won a gold medal with an incredible performance of “Moon Goddess” at the World Choir Games in Sochi, Russia.
“In her poems to the Sumerian goddess of love Inanna, she speaks to a deity who has descended to earth asan ally, as a friend to help her in her need. Inthe poems’ sensuality, surprising metaphors, and intimacy, they recall Sappho’s poems to her ally Aphrodite.”

– Willis Barnstone

Text

O my lady, on hearing your sound, hills and flatlands bow.
O my lady, guardian of all the great essences, you have picked them up and hung them
on your hand.
You are lofty like Heaven. Let the world know! You are wide like the earth. Let the world know!
You strike everything down in battle.
O my lady, on your wings

you hack away the land and charge disguised as a charging storm,
roar as a roaring storm,
thunder and keep thundering, and snort with evil winds.
O primary one,
moon goddess Inanna of heaven and earth!
On your harp of sighs I hear your dirge.
O my lady, this song has made you great and exalted you.
O my lady, wife of An, I have told your fury!

– Enheduanna (born ca. 2300 B.C)

-Adapted by Jocelyn Hagen, based on adaptations by Aliki and Willis Barnstone, from William W. Hallo and J. J. A. van Dijk, The Exaltation of Inanna (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)