God, Forgive Us
Scored for SATB choir with optional organ, God Forgive Us is a setting of a confessional prayer used at University Public Worship at Stanford Memorial Church. I began it during my Stanford years and finished it in 2015, well after I had graduated, so it has not been performed. It is dedicated to the Memorial Church Choir and its director, Robert Huw Morgan, who took the post in 2009, after Greg Wait’s retirement.
The phrase Holy God returns throughout as a recurring supplication. Each couplet opens with a solo line — four in all, one for each voice, soprano through bass, sung by a soloist or by the section — to which the full choir answers with the couplet’s second line. The key signature is C major, though the music modulates so freely that the score is written in accidentals throughout. God Forgive Us is a brief, searching prayer of particular significance to the Stanford community.
The text:
You have called us to live in faith and freedom,
but we live with a tightness in our chest.
You have called us to reach out in new directions,
but we cling to the path we know.
You have called us to live with abandon, in trust,
but we live carefully, in fear.
God, forgive us. Amen.
Opus 15 | SATB a cappella (optional organ) | English | 1:30
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