O Nata Lux

SSATBB | Duration c. 4’

This somber setting of the well-known Latin text was commissioned by Dr. Erin Colwitz and the Marquette Choral Society in 2019 for their planned tour to Italy in 2020. Though both the choir’s tour and the premiere of the work were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the quiet thoughtfulness of this setting has taken on new meaning in the intervening years. The piece reaches a deliberate anticlimax on the text tui beati corporis (“your blessed body”) — appropriate words, perhaps, for a time in which the physical body has been so variously threatened.

O Nata Lux was premiered by Marquette Choral Society in Italy in May, 2022.

O nata lux de lumine, Jesu redemptor saeculi,
Dignare clemens supplicum laudes precesque sumere.
Qui carne quondam contegi dignatus es pro perditis
Nos membra confer effici Tui beati corporis.

O Light born of Light, Jesus, redeemer of the world,
Mercifully deign to accept the praises and prayers of your suppliants.
O you who once deigned to be hidden in flesh on behalf of the lost,
grant us to be made members of your blessed body.

Text source: ‘Cantiones Sacrae’ 1575 Thomas Tallis
English translation: Edmund H. Fellowes