Reverence

Scored for Concert Band, this work was premiered in an reduced instrumentation on March 6, 2022. The piece was created as a companion to a sermon series on Romans that would culminate with this text. It is a reverent contemplation of God's transcendent nature: "Oh, the depth of the riches and widsom and knowledge God! How unsearcable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through im and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." The piece opens with a chaotic jumble of sound that opens out into a great echoing space representing eternity. The echo figuration recurs throughout to anchor the piece through its sections. After the opening music that portrays wonder and mystery, a small scherzando section follows and it depcits the confused murmurings of human wisdom and earthly attempts to reduce God's ways to human scale. These efforts are ultimately frustrated and washed away by a third section that revisists the majesty of God and begins with a layering and building of staggered Amen figurations that layer and build to the final statement of Amen.