One Thing is a setting of verse 4 from Psalm 27, for a cappella SATB choir, written for the farewell service of the Reverend Maurice Charles at Stanford’s University Public Worship as he left to take up a new post. He had sung tenor in the choir, and when I asked him for a text he chose this verse himself. The words are his selection, the music my farewell, and the piece was sung in his presence at the service.

I chose D major and a flowing 2/4, and set the text syllabically in eighth notes. The music modulates to G major at “all the days of my life.” At “to behold,” the moving eighths give way to more contemplative long note values, and an F-natural opens a warmer, F-major light. The word “beauty,” sung three times and marked espressivo e dolcissimo, is stressed at different moments in each voice, ringing like bell-tones over a D-major-seventh chord. A diminuendo settles onto “of the Lord,” with the tenors floating softly above the altos in a quiet voice-crossing. A closing imitative section, molto espressivo, gives each voice its own swelling entrance on a dotted theme before all voices arrive at D major. The added Amen closes on a plagal cadence, its subdominant warmed to the minor and its tonic arrival gently suspended, so the final D major resolves with a quiet sense of longing, an echo of the seeking described by the psalmist.

The text, from Psalm 27: