God Forgive Us is a setting of a confessional prayer used at University Public Worship at Stanford Memorial Church, for SATB choir with optional organ. I began it during my years at the church 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 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. A brief, searching prayer of some ninety seconds.

The text: