For about two decades, maybe longer, we’ve ended our Passover Seder by singing “Amazing Grace.” It’s always late and we’re full – of food, spirit, love, and hope, and other good things. Obviously not a traditional Jewish song, its message of hope and redemption resonates in way that makes it the perfect ending for the night.

We usually have about 20 people crammed into our family room, which we dis-assemble before the Seder and re-assemble afterwards. It’s mainly a mix of family and old friends, some of whom have now been doing this together for over three decades. We’ve done it long enough that we’ve welcomed kids, tried to entertain them when they were quite small, delighted as they started to read from the Haggadah, and savored the moments when they began to engage with Seder’s ideas and themes. Over the years, moreover, we’ve also welcomed their friends into this important family tradition.

Last year, of course, was different. Like many, we had a Zoom Seder (which did allow many people to join from a distance and could accommodate more people than our family room). Due to Zoom’s limitations we couldn’t sing together. But we drew strength and solace from singing together, even if on mute. And, as always, we ended with Amazing Grace (I think with one person unmuted, but I can’t recall).

The song’s power – and the meaning and strength many people have drawn from music in these months of COVID – all came to mind as I thought about today’s #stampoftheday. A 5-cent stamp issued in 1964, it honors the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which was founded on February 13, 1914 by Victor Herbert and 8 others who were concerned about the fact that composers weren’t benefitting from the growing number of clubs where their music was being performed.

The stamp, which pictures early 19th century wind and string instruments, also is notable because it was designed by Bradbury Thompson, one of the mid-20th century’s leading graphic designers. In addition to designing over 80 stamps, he designed over 61 issues of Westvaco Inspirations for Printers, served as art director of Mademoiselle magazine, designed 25 magazines, including Business Week, the Harvard Business Review, and Smithsonian, and created the landmark Washburn College Bible, which presented the King James Bible in an entirely new way.

Initially, ASCAP had about 100 members, including Irving Berlin, James Weldon Johnson, Jerome Kern, and John Philip Sousa. All the members’ work was collected in a catalog and anyone that wanted to use this music had to license the entire catalog, not just a single song. But restaurants and nightclubs that had been using this music for free didn’t want to start paying. Ultimately the differences went to the US Supreme Court where ASCAP prevailed. “If music did not pay, it would be given up,” wrote Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. “Whether it pays or not, the purpose of employing it is profit and that is enough.”

Fortunately, music was not given up. And, while profit is certainly part of the point, the profit comes from the fact that music speaks to us. In April, a week after Passover (and John Prine’s death), Jenny Boylan wrote a wonderful New York Times column titled “What are the Songs that Are Helping You Survive?”

The piece, which included Jenny’s “isolation playlist” made me think about what music was helping me through the pandemic’s early stages. Not surprisingly, it was an eclectic list of music that had somehow been important to me at various points in time, a list that included everything from Bach’s cello sonatas to the Weavers’ 1980 reunion concert at Carnegie Hall, a Monk/Trane double album that Eric Nass probably first played for me years ago, and “Amazing Grace,” the great double CD of Aretha Franklin singing gospel in Los Angeles in the early 1970s.

Here we are months later. I’m not someone who listen to music regularly, but there are moments when it has helped me get through these challenging times. I reach back to the same old chestnuts. And there are other new moments. I was moved to tears by the special pandemic version of Handel’s Messiah created by the Handle and Hayden Society and WGBH. I was unexpectedly moved when I stumbled across the video that floats around Facebook of the pre-pandemic flash mob performance of the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. And, like many, I was deeply moved by the performances of “Hallelujah” and “Amazing Grace” at the ceremony for COVID victims held the night before the inauguration. I know we’ll sing again at Passover but I’m not sure what form the Seder will take.

Today, the song “How Can I Keep from Singing,” came to mind earlier while I was cross country skiing through gently rolling woods at Mass Audubon’s Ipswich River Sanctuary and thinking about what I’d write about music when I came home.

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation,
I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation

Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing
It finds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

Be well, stay safe, don’t “keep from singing,” fight for justice, and work for peace.