Pater Noster is a setting of the Lord’s Prayer, for a cappella SATB choir, built on a Gregorian chant theme. It is dedicated to Albert Whangbo and Mariana Olvera-Cravioto, written for their wedding.  It is the first of two pieces I composed for the occasion. I finished it before speaking with the couple, who then asked for a Bible verse set in Spanish; that verse became Como el Padre (Op.18). In the end, no forces were available to perform either piece at the wedding in Mexico.  Both were later sung by the Stanford Memorial Church Choir, with the dedicatees present.

The work opens in C major, the chant tune intoned in one voice part as the others gather around it in harmony.  Each new phrase is introduced by a different voice and harmonized in a different way.  A sustained open fifth at in terra (“on earth”) first implies E minor, and several searching measures pass before the tenors’ rising F-sharp to G on quotidianum (“daily”) finally fixes the new key of G major, as the sopranos carry chant at Panem nostrum (“our daily bread”). Tension gathers at debitoribus (“debtors”), each voice taking up the text in turn. Once all have entered, a great crescendo and allargando drive the final nostris to a fortissimo, accented cadence, with F-natural pulling the harmony back to C major for the closing section. There the altos chant libera nos a malo (“free us from evil”) in harmony with the tenors, and again each voice part takes up the plea in turn, as if every section asks for their own deliverance. The malo dissolves seamlessly into an Amen on the opening Gregorian theme, marked dolcissimo and espressivo.

Here are the Latin and English texts: