Gottesacker plateau in the Allgäu Alps

God's Acre (German Gottesacker, lit. Field of God) is an ancient Germanic designation for a burial ground.

In Christianity[link]

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It has become the traditional name given to the graveyards of Congregations of the Moravian Church. The first Moravian God's Acre was begun in 1730 on the western slope of the Hutberg (Hill of Watching) at Herrnhut Saxony in Germany, the Moravian Mother Congregation. As the Moravian Church spread around the world, they laid out their graveyards on hilltops, calling them Hutberg and naming the graveyard God's Acre.The name comes from the belief that the bodies of the dead are "sown as seed" in God's Acre, as in a field, so that they can rise again when Jesus Christ returns to the world. God's Acre is not literally one acre in size; many are larger or smaller.

Moravians believe strongly in equality, even in death; therefore, every stone in a God's Acre is a recumbent stone with the same proportions and made of the same material so that no one person stands out among the stones. The Communion of Saints is continued even on the graveyard as it reflects the continuity of the congregation. In addition, the deceased are buried by choir; to the Moravians, these were the living groups into which the Congregation was originally divided to meet the needs of the members according to their age and station in life. Originally men and women sat in their choir groups in church at worship. The burial by choir in God's Acre also reflects the way the members of the congregation sat as a worshipping community so that visually and symbolically the Congregation continues in the graveyard.

Along with being separated by gender, there are also sections for people of different age and marital status. The typical configuration has sections for infant girls and infant boys, girls and boys, single men and single women, and married men and married women. The deceased are buried in their section in the order they have died. Smaller God's Acres may combine the infant and children sections. Some larger God's Acres, such as the one for the Salem Congregation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, may also have separate sections for those who are cremated, as their remains take up less space than those who are buried with their bodies intact. This section is also organized by choir.

In addition to the God's Acre on the Hutberg in Herrnhut and the God's Acre of Salem Congregation in Winston-Salem, N.C. there are striking God's Acres in almost every Moravian Congregation, including in Chelsea Moravian Burial Ground (part of London) in the United Kingdom, Bethlehem and Nazareth, Pennsylvania, Bethania in North Carolina and Koenigsfeld in the Black Forest of Germany. Many God's Acres also feature arched entrance gates inscribed with an appropriate Bible verse along the top; if there is more than one entrance to the Acre, each gate will usually have a verse above it.

Many Moravian churches have a custom of holding an Easter sunrise service, or Resurrection Service in a God's Acre, the "Church Militant" gathering together amid the graves of the "Church Triumphant" before the Risen Savior. The week prior to the service, families and church groups clean the gravestones and decorate them with flowers, transforming the God's Acre into an almost-garden like place. The opening words of the Resurrection Service, "The Lord is risen!/The Lord is risen indeed!" date from the first such Moravian-style service in Herrnhut, Germany in 1732. The liturgy for the service is a Confession of Faith drawn up by Nicolaus Ludwig, Count von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) patron and leader of the Renewed Unitas Fratrum. It is based on Dr. Martin Luther's Small Catechism.

God's Acre in Blackville, South Carolina[link]

Water being retrieved from God's Acre Healing Spring

God's Acre also refers to a small patch of land whose legal owner is "God Almighty". The land includes a natural spring whose water local tradition holds has healing powers. Located near Blackville, South Carolina, the land was owned by L. P. "Lute" Boylston until 1944 when he died. In his will, Boylston gave the land to "God Almighty" to ensure that the water from its spring would always be free for anyone to drink. It can be found just off SC 3; look for signs three miles (5 km) north of Blackville. Coordinates: 33.392160, -81.273276 The Springs are listed as part of the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor.^[1] There is also a nearby historical marker on SC 3.^[2]

God's Acre in New Canaan, Connecticut[link]

A section of town in New Canaan, Connecticut, where there are three large, white churches side by side, is referred to locally as "God's Acre", although the area is actually less than an acre and the name came about because the area was once a cemetery.^[3]

References[link]

Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions. His most popular works include the scores to The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ghostbusters.

Bernstein won an Oscar for his score to Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and was nominated for fourteen Oscars in total. He also won two Golden Globes and was nominated for two Grammy Awards.

Early life[link]

Bernstein was born in New York City, the son of Selma (née Feinstein) and Edward Bernstein.^[1] He was not related to the celebrated composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity.^[2] Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard).^[3]

During his childhood, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, in the latter case playing the part of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway, and he also won several prizes for his painting. He gravitated toward music at the age of twelve, at which time he was given a scholarship in piano by Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard teacher who guided him throughout his entire career as a pianist. She took him to play some of his improvisations for composer Aaron Copland, who was encouraging and selected Israel Citkowitz as a teacher for the young boy.^[4] Bernstein's music has some stylistic similarities to Copland's music, most notably in his western scores, particularly sections of Big Jake, in the Gregory Peck film Amazing Grace and Chuck, and in his spirited score for the 1958 film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre.

Throughout his life, Bernstein demonstrated an enthusiasm for an even wider spectrum of the arts than his childhood interests would imply and, in 1959, when he was scoring The Story on Page One, he considered becoming a novelist and asked the film's screenwriter, Clifford Odets, to give him lessons in writing fiction.

Career[link]

Bernstein wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments (1956), The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robot Monster, and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials.^[4] His theme for The Magnificent Seven is also familiar to television viewers, as it was used in commercials for Marlboro cigarettes. Bernstein also provided the score to many of the short films of Ray and Charles Eames.

Broadway[link]

In addition to his film music, Bernstein wrote the scores for two Broadway musicals, How Now, Dow Jones, with lyricist Carolyn Leigh, in 1967 and Merlin, with lyricist Don Black, in 1983.^[5]

Politics[link]

Along with many in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. He was "gray-listed" (not banned, but kept off major projects) due to sympathy with left-wing causes, and had to work on low-budget science fiction films such as Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon.^[4]

Comedies[link]

John Landis grew up near Bernstein, and befriended him through his children. Years later, he requested Bernstein do the music for National Lampoon's Animal House, over the studio's objections. He explained to Bernstein that he thought that Bernstein's score, playing it straight as if the comedic Delta frat characters were actual heroes, would emphasize the comedy further. The opening theme to the movie is based upon a slight inversion of a secondary theme from Brahms' Academic Festival Overture. Bernstein accepted the job, and it sparked a second wave in his career, where he continued to do high-profile comedies such as The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, Stripes, and Airplane!, as well as most of Landis's films for the next 15 years.

[edit] Cape Fear

When Martin Scorsese announced that he was re-making Cape Fear, Bernstein adapted Bernard Herrmann's original score to the new film. Bernstein leapt at the opportunity to work with Scorsese, and to pay homage to Herrmann. Scorsese and Bernstein subsequently worked together on two more films, 1993's The Age of Innocence and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Bernstein had previously conducted Herrman's original unused score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1966 Torn Curtain.^[6]

Classical[link]

Having studied composition under Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe, Bernstein also performed as a concert pianist between 1939 and 1950 and wrote numerous classical compositions, including three orchestral suites, two song cycles, various compositions for viola and piano and for solo piano, and a string quartet. As president of the Young Musicians Foundation, Bernstein became acquainted with classical guitarist Christopher Parkening and wrote a Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which Parkening recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Bernstein's baton for the Angel label in 1999. In addition, Bernstein was a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.^[7]

Awards[link]

Over the course of his career, Bernstein won an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.^[8] In addition, he was nominated for the Tony Award three times^[5] and a Grammy Award five times.

He received 14 Academy Award nominations and was nominated at least once per decade from the 1950s until the 2000s, but his only win was for Thoroughly Modern Millie for Best Original Music Score. Bernstein was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with Golden Globes for his scores for To Kill a Mockingbird and Hawaii. In 1963, he won the Emmy for Excellence in Television for his score of the documentary The Making of The President 1960. He is the recipient of Western Heritage Awards for The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Hallelujah Trail (1965).^[8]

He received five Grammy Award nominations from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and garnered two Tony Award nominations for the Broadway musicals How Now Dow Jones and Merlin.

Additional honors included Lifetime achievement awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, the USA, Woodstock, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach and Flanders International Film Festivals and the Foundation for a Creative America.

In 1996, Bernstein was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard.^[9] In 1999, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Five Towns College in New York and was honored by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Bernstein again was honored by ASCAP with its marquee Founders Award in 2001^[9] and with the NARAS Governors Award in June 2004.

His scores for The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird were ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth and seventeenth greatest American film scores of all time, respectively, on the list of AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, and Jerry Goldsmith are the only composers to have two scores listed, and are therefore in second place for the most scores on the list, behind John Williams, who has three. Other Bernstein scores for the following the films were nominated for the list:

• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Far from Heaven (2002)
• The Great Escape (1963)
• Hawaii (1966)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
• Summer and Smoke (1961)
• Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
• The Ten Commandments (1956)
• Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

Death[link]

Bernstein died of cancer in his sleep at his home in Ojai, California, on August 18, 2004.^[10]

Filmography[link]

Broadway theatre[link]

• Peter Pan (1954) - Incidental music composer
• How Now, Dow Jones (1967) - Composer - Tony Co-Nomination for Best Musical, Tony Co-Nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist
• Merlin (1982) - Composer and Incidental music composer - Tony Co-Nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Official website
• Elmer Bernstein at the Internet Movie Database
• Elmer Bernstein at the Internet Broadway Database
• Elmer Bernstein at the TCM Movie Database
• SWF movie with soundtracks
• Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks
• Fan website
• BernsteinWest.com
• Meatballs Movie Website