Wayland Rogers: All of Creation is a Song

  
The text is a translation from the latin writings of Hildegard of Bingen. This extraordinary woman of the Medival Age was greatly venerated in her own lifetime and continues to inspire awe 900 years after her death.
In setting this text, which sees the divine in the everyday world, I wanted to use everyday musical language in a way that would express the heightened awareness of religous experience. The melodies, harmonies and rhythms are those popular music while the development of the material, the contrapuntal devices, the form, and the scoring are derived from classical style.
The antiquity of the text is suggested by introducing the primary melodic material in plainsong fashion by the keyboard (organ and piano). Within a few measures it takes on more modern dress in anticipation of the entrance of the voices.