Boundless Heart was written for the wedding of Kim Hsieh and Grant Baillie, and scored for SATB choir, spoken voice, temple bell, and string quartet. It draws on two texts: the English words of the Karaniya Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s discourse on loving-kindness, and the Pali metta chant of blessing. The two alternate throughout, the speaker delivering the Sutta phrase by phrase while the choir answers each time by singing the Pali blessing — the teaching spoken, the blessing sung — with a temple bell, sounding B above middle C, marking each turn between them. Although the harmony is diatonic throughout, the themes themselves are pentatonic, lending the music an Eastern modal color that mirrors the spirit of the text.

A brief string introduction and a bell open the work. The speaker begins, “So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings” over a sustained C-major chord in the strings; a chime from the temple bell then cues the choir to answer in Pali. Each verse modulates to a new key: the second moves to E major, the speaker’s “Radiating kindness over the entire world” again over sustained strings, again answered by the choir after the temple bell chimes. An interlude carries the music to D major for “Spreading upward… and downward to the depths,” after which the temple bell cues the choir in canon at the octave.

A contrasting più mosso section in G major follows, the choir now peppier at sukhi attanam pariharantu. The strings take a longer, livelier interlude of their own before the close. A final chime on the temple bell cues the speaker to conclude, “Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down… this is said to be the sublime abiding.” This last bell brings the choir back to recapitulate the entire Pali chant, from Avera to pariharantu, freshly reharmonized. The final word is repeated allargando and a cappella before the strings close serenely in the home key.

The audio sample begins midway through measure 42, just after the speaker completes “…freed from hatred and ill-will,” with the strings, the bell, and then the choir entering in canon.

The spoken text, from the Karaniya Metta Sutta:

The sung text, the Pali metta chant: