Two decades of resonance: The origins of “A Cathedral In My Heart”

If you’ve attended a CAP Performing Arts Showcase in the last 20 years, you’ve heard the work of local songwriter, author and playwright Frances Key. Often referred to as the “CAP song,” her piece “A Cathedral in my Heart” has been sung by CAP students every year since she wrote it two decades ago.

Key grew up in Jacksonville, attended UNF and became a teacher. She has written hundreds of songs around the themes of international goodwill and peace, with a focus on children. Her works have held wide international appeal and have been sung by a variety of choruses around the world.

“A Cathedral in my Heart” was written in 2005, the second song Key created in honor of a particularly moving experience in her life. In 1999, she had the rare opportunity to spend the summer in Fort Dix, New Jersey, teaching music and English to refugee children from Kosovo. When the refugee camp that had been set up there closed, she wrote a song to mark the occasion called “The Children of Kosova.”

“It was heartbreaking work, as these people had gone through so much horror, but when I sang with the children, I realized how healing music was for them,” she recalls. “I saw the therapeutic value of music in children’s lives. These children who had arrived terrified and cowering now stood up with pride to sing in front of everyone. It was truly amazing.”

She was inspired. Upon her return to Jacksonville, she formed The International Peace Performers, another chorus of refugee children that performed her original songs of peace and recorded several CDs. In 2005, Key was directing that group while also working as a music teacher in Duval County Schools and as a chorus instructor with CAP. Once again, she was inspired.

“I taught the children songs I had written about peace and international goodwill which we performed at the Showcase, dressed in costumes from around the world,” Key says. “I was so impressed with the variety of arts programs CAP offered that I decided to write an additional song thanking them for giving the children the opportunity to learn the arts.”

When the composition was complete, she invited two of her students from Oak Hill Elementary, India White and Jaylin Adams, to her friend Gina Martinelli‘s home studio to record it. “I used that recording to teach the children and also as a guide for them to sing along with at the Showcase,” she says.

That song, “A Cathedral in my Heart,” was an immediate favorite. Every year since, CAP students have listened to that recording to learn the song and perform it at CAP’s Performing Arts Showcase.

Twenty years on, Key still believes in the power of that enduring work.

“It means so much to know that it has been used to express gratitude to CAP for bringing the transformative power of the arts to children in this community,” she says.

Key’s musical legacy has a long history (yes, she is related to the other Francis Key, the one who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner”) and a bright future. When CAP students sing “A Cathedral in my Heart” at the upcoming Performing Arts Showcase on May 3, she’ll be in attendance, but for another reason: Her great-grandson, Ossian, is performing in the show.

“He is in the orchestra. He plays the cello,” she says. “When his mother told me he was playing the cello at school, it didn’t register at the time. When she sent me the invitation, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, this is through CAP!'”

“It’s such an important program for the community children,” Key says of CAP. “We all know what the arts can do for us. My life has just been kind of steeped in all of that.”

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“A Cathedral in my Heart”
by Frances Key, 2005
I learned to sing and the song set me free,
I learned to dance and the dance gave me wings!
I learned to paint on the canvas of life,
And now I can see I have made a new start!

There’s a cathedral in my heart,
An open space of love and light!
Yes, a cathedral rising high,
A ray of hope within my life!

Thank you for the gift!
Thank you for the lift!
Thank you one and all,
Someday I’ll pass it on

I learned to play instruments on my own,
I learned to read some musical notes,
I learned to act on the stage with a smile,
And all of these things made me feel like a star!

There’s a cathedral in my heart,
An open space of love and light!
Yes, a cathedral rising high,
A ray of hope within my life!

Thank you for the gift!
Thank you for the lift!
Thank you, one and all, someday I’ll pass it on,
Someday I will pass it on and on and on and on and on!
Thank you!