Veni Sancte Spiritus

Veni Sancte Spiritus is the sequence hymn for the Mass at Pentecost, in which Christians celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles fifty days after the resurrection of Christ at Easter, marking the founding of the Church.

My setting is dominated by two particular elements, both inspired by numerical symbolism used in the poem. Each stanza of the text is composed of three verses each containing seven syllables. These numbers, three and seven, would have carried great spiritual significance for the poem's author and his readers. Seven was commonly used to denote the perfection of God, while three is linked to the concept of the Holy Trinity. By employing only the seven pitches of the pure F Aeolian mode and by relying heavily on triple meter for the rhythm, I was able to weave this numeric symbolism into the very fabric of the music.

Veni was undergoing a few final revisions in summer of 2001, and was completed on September 11, 2001, the day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. In memory of the victims, it contains the postscript "Requiescant in pace," "May they rest in peace."

From the composer's notes to In This Place (Enharmonic Records, 2013).