Completed in 1990 (and revised in 1991) for the RIAS Chamber Choir, this is Pärt’s first setting of an English text, and exhibits a consistent approach to each phrase’s metre—short notes flanked by longer ones. A series of upwards chromatic shifts, marked by bass pedal notes in the organ, raises the work’s tonal area to a climax on ‘Amen’ around C sharp minor, before a flurry of quintuplet broken chords in the organ rapidly hurls the music back down to its opening tonality of F minor.
from notes by Meurig Bowen © 1998
