May 29, 2009, 7:00 pm

A New Creation -

The Choral Works of 21st Century
American Composers

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Join Matthew Sprinkle, The Saint Thomas Aquinas Schola Cantorum and Orchestra, as they explore the compositions of America's greatest 21st Century composers. The Schola Cantorum and Orchestra will perform René Clausen's "A New Creation" and compositions by America 's finest 21 century composers; including: Leo Nestor, Morten Lauridsen, Thomas Fielding, and others.

Don't miss our final concert of the season, as we present a truly American concert of the finest choral music of the 21st Century.

Location: Nave - Saint Thomas Aquinas Church

Tickets: General Admission $25,
Prime Preferred $50,

Student $10

René Clausen's " A New Creation" continues in the tradition of a long line of great composers, including: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and others, with his writing of a cantata, literally "to sing," a work intended for concert performance and modeled on operatic forms. It employs sections of recitatives, and arias, chorus, and orchestra. A New Creation utilizes texts in English, Greek and Latin and are taken from the Bible, the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, and hymn text written by George Herbert.

Clausen has this to say about his work: "A New Creation is a piece of church music, not of any particular sect, synod, or denomination; however, [it] does express a Christian point of view. That the piece is written in praise of God, whoever he and/or she might be, and in whatever form that God takes for each individual, seems to me to be essential to the understanding of the work.”

He continues, "The various movements are attempts to characterize, through music, various aspects of the human/God, God/human relationship. Awe and wonder, unworthiness and doubt, mercy and forgiveness, love, joy, and peace, are all wrapped together in this piece, as indeed these elements are wrapped together in our daily lives. The thematic and artistic credo of this work, which serves both as the title overall and of the central movement - A New Creation - is representative of the composer's belief that the unwrapping of all these elements in the progression of our lives -- sometimes with joy, sometimes with pain -- is worth the effort."