Performed by the Cathedral Choir of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Oklahoma City - Michael Scott, Director of Music.

 

2019 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oklahoma City, where I had the pleasure to serve as a cantor and choir member. To mark this anniversary, the Cathedral underwent a substantial renovation and was reopened to the public at the Rededication Mass on November 16, 2019. I thought that it would be great to have a new work commemorate this rededication and was very pleased when the director of music, Michael Scott, agreed to let me write music for this event. The text, “locus iste” (this place),  comes from the Latin gradual for the anniversary of the dedication of a church (Missa in anniversario dedicationis ecclesiae), and has been used by many composers - most famously in the setting by Anton Bruckner for the dedication of a votive chapel in the New Cathedral of Linz in 1869. Unlike, Bruckner’s setting, which is a lovely chorale, I wanted to harken back musically to the “golden age” of polyphony and create something that would sound a bit like Palestrina in the 21st century.

 

Locus iste a Deo factus est,

This place was made by God,

 

inaestimabile sacramentum,

a priceless sacrament,

 

irreprehensibilis est.

it is without reproach.