James MacMillan: Alpha and Omega

Setting of Revelation 21: 1–6a commisioned by Soli Deo Gloria with support from Crossway Bibles and from the University of Chicago, and premiered in June 2011 by the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel Choir and Motet Choir.
A dramatic and powerful setting of an iconic text, this work opens with a homophonic passage for full choir (divisi) with wide, slow dynamic gradations and silences. Polyphonic sections alternate with further homophony; upper voices then usher in a very soft pasage over lower voice drones before a fortissimo ending derived from the work's beginning.