Product Description
Instrumentation: SATB chorus and soloists plus orchestra 2222-2221-timp-perc-hp-org-strings.
Mass for the Holy Year 2000 is in nine movements and scored for SATB chorus, chamber orchestra and organ. I set the entire Latin text from the Ordinary of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. In between these sections, I added four settings of contemporary poems written in English. Initially, I wanted to use poems that would bring to the listener's attention the serious humanitarian issues we face every day on earth as we enter a new millennium: religious and ethnic wars, poverty, genocide, AIDS, intolerance, social inequality and racial injustice. But as I began to slowly understand the text of the Mass, I decided that the contemporary poems I would use should reflect and amplify what is already in the Latin text. It is all about faith and redemption.
Elizabeth Kirschner (b. 1955) is a poet who lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Her poem is about the search for God. Claude McKay (1890-1948), a member of the Harlem Renaissance Poets, was originally from Jamaica. His poem asks for God's presence. Edith Stein (1891-1942) was a Carmelite nun who was killed by the Nazis during World War II because she was a Jew. Her poem celebrates God's presence. The final poem is by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (1915-1968). His poem, which was published posthumously, is about the assassination of the civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King.
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