This is one of my earliest pieces, written in 1988, in pencil. It sets a single word, Alleluia, repeated throughout, in the spirit of Randall Thompson’s well-known setting. I wrote it as a personal etude rather than for any occasion, and conceived it for a high-school choir rather than seasoned professionals, so it stays within comfortable reach for a developing ensemble. It is in C major, marked moderato ma ritmico, for SATB choir with an optional piano that simply doubles the voices.

The piece is built on a single eleven-bar theme, lightly syncopated, that returns again and again in changing dress. The altos state it first, alone; the tenors join in harmony. From there, each return re-textures the same melody, passing it among the voices, setting it against new countermelodies, and framing it with short staccato chants that usher in the next statement.

Late in the piece, a passage marked con accentatura brings staggered, accented entrances across the voices, and its chromatic shifts resettle the music into B-flat major. That new key sets up the climax, a soaring soprano line that crowns the final return. The music then draws back, easing into a gentler tempo, and coming to rest on three quiet “amens” in the new tonic key.

The audio sample begins at measure 36.