About the Work

One of the earliest recorded musical traditions is chant, which provided the base on which new forms of church music developed. This particular text began as an antiphonal setting in which two choirs or voices would recite phrases back to each other. Due to its common use over the course of centuries, this sacred text requires an additional responsibility of interpretation so that its many prior contexts can be properly acknowledged. From the beginning of the piece, we hear bells—from a cathedral or churchyard, a monastery, or could it be something else? Though the song is scored for mixed voices, the singular “chant” line carries the first entrance to be echoed and passed down through the choir, until it returns once more in the final moments of the work.

-Blake