The acronym SOCSA, appearing in the title of the work A SOCSA Quilt by California-based composer Margaret S. Meier, stands for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and was coined by the composer. The topic has been more commonly addressed in popular music than in the concert music sphere, where Meier's work may be the first to take up the theme; she furnishes her own texts, combined with others drawn from the Bible (including the album title But Joy Comes in the Morning). The quilt structure has the subject of more than one ...
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The acronym SOCSA, appearing in the title of the work A SOCSA Quilt by California-based composer Margaret S. Meier, stands for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and was coined by the composer. The topic has been more commonly addressed in popular music than in the concert music sphere, where Meier's work may be the first to take up the theme; she furnishes her own texts, combined with others drawn from the Bible (including the album title But Joy Comes in the Morning). The quilt structure has the subject of more than one failed attempt to translate it into musical terms, but Meier's solution is simple and convincing: the biblical texts, unified respectively in each half of the work by melodic or harmonic means, form the frame or "border" of the quilt, enclosing each individual episode. Those episodes straightforwardly set out the events of child sexual abuse (in Part I: Horror and Heartache) and subsequent recovery (in Part II: Healing and Hope). Some of the episodes are spoken, and each tends to bring...
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