Rebecca L. Abbott holds a BMus from Wheaton College with studies in voice, organ, music theater, and English literature, including intensive study of mythology and George MacDonald with Rolland Hein; an MA in liturgy and the arts from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, with sacred music at Boston University; and a DWS from the Institute for Worship Studies. Serving as an instructor in hymnology at the Sacred Music Institute of America, she also enjoys translating and versifying texts and working with musicians in French- and German-speaking countries. She is currently touring with "As a Matter of Fancy," her debut solo album of original compositions, which can be heard through links at rebeccaabbott.hearnow.com, and is also performing literary songs on pipe organ as the Singing Organist.
Of her submission to the George MacDonald music competition, Abbott says, "I grew up among my father's thousands of books on the Inklings and their inspirations, which included MacDonald's fantasy works and other fiction. I was especially taken with C. S. Lewis's understanding of myth as a 'gleam' of truth falling on the imagination—at one point, I even worked on memorizing his 'Weight of Glory' essay in both English and German!—and found this thought presented even more enticingly in MacDonald's Phantastes; the world of 'Faerie invade[s] the world of men' (ch. 13). I wanted to tie it in more deliberately with the idea of story, so opened with a phrase the fairies say to mock the main character: 'He has begun a story without a beginning, and it will never have an end' (ch. 8).
"Those words suggested beginning the song in the middle, as it were, without any more introduction than an arresting chord—a first invasion of Faerie. A couple different keys for the song are suggested simultaneously throughout, like the overlayering of two worlds at once. Then we hear a couple measures of higher notes, suggesting 'the lights and influences of the upper worlds,' which then descend into our world. I did close with the same chord as the opening, but an octave higher, which is my interpretation of the worlds joining more closely, of our being lifted up into the other realms that even now saturate our own."