I composed this setting of a verse from Psalm 30 for Greg Wait, to mark his thirtieth anniversary as Choir Director at Stanford Memorial Church. I engineered it to contain exactly thirty measures of music for thirty years of service, and used G major for Greg’s initial. The Latin translation is mine; I chose “robed,” an obvious choir reference, for circumdedisti where a psalter might say “girded.”

The text turns from mourning to rejoicing, and the music turns with it. At concidisti saccum meum (“you have taken away my sackcloth”), the harmony temporarily darkens to E minor, before the verse brightly expands through laetitia (“gladness”). The final ut cantet gloria mea, (“so that my glory might sing”) lands on an eight-part fortissimo G-major chord spanning from the bottom of the bass clef to the top of the treble clef. This work is a warm and grateful anthem for an a cappella SATB choir, and dedicated to a masterful musician, consummate professional, and dear friend. The audio sample begins at measure 1.

Here are the Latin and English texts: