• Premiere: December 2005 / Grace Episcopal Church / Newton, MA / Dr. Linda Clark 

• Instrumentation: SATB and Organ

• Duration: 3:40'

• Text: English paraphrase of a hymn by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834 - 1924)

• Suitable for choirs of all levels

• Appropriate for worship or concert performance

Program Note

This piece began as an exercise in composition seminar at Southern Mississippi in 2002. The assignment was to write an accompaniment that was an organic extension of a given melody. The accompaniment figure that appears in the first few bars was extrapolated across the verses, with slight variations and descants.  These variations then made their way back into the accompaniment in later verses, continuing the line of organic development throughout the piece.

This setting lie incomplete until 2005, when it was finished for the Lessons and Carols service at Grace Episcopal Church that year. It was my first premiere at Grace, and the beginning of a long collaboration with Dr. Linda Clark, who went on to present more than a dozen of my choral pieces over the next four years.