Credo (from Mass 1992)
Flexible Voicing a cappella
Duration 00:15 (Nope, not kidding.)
Text from the Mass
Notes
The final project for my Master’s Degree in Music Composition back in 1992 was to write a Mass. I experimented with sounds that the human body and voice can make that are not often used in traditional choral music. Each movement uses different techniques. The entire Mass has never been performed together, however most movements have been performed separately.
I would like to claim that I thought long and hard about this setting of the Credo, but one thing that has always bothered me about Masses, it that the Credo is “soooo long.” I decided I wanted to write the shortest Credo ever. It is not unprecedented for composers to overlap texts of the Credo to save time, so I decided to lay 43 sections of the text on top of each other at the same time.
Text
Credo in unum Deum.
Patrem omnipotentem,
factorem caeli et terrae,
visibilium omnium et invisibilium.
Et in unum Dominum
Jesum Christum,
Filium Dei unigenitum,
Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine,
Deum verum de Deo vero.
Genitum, non factum,
consubstantialem Patri:
per quem omnia facta sunt.
Qui propter nos homines
et propter nostram salutem
descendit de caelis.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto
ex Maria Virgine:
Et homo factus est.
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato:
passus, et sepultus est.
Et resurrexit tertia die,
secundum scripturas.
Et ascendit in caelum:
sedet ad dexteram Patris.
Et iterum venturus est
cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos:
Cujus regni non erit finis.
Et in Spiritum sanctum Dominum,
et vivificantem:
Qui ex Patre, Filioque procedit.
Qui cum Patre, et Filio simul adoratur,
et conglorificatur:
Qui locutus est per Prophetas.
Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
Confiteor unum baptisma
in remissionem peccatorum.
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum
Et vitam venturi saeculi.
Amen.