This piece was written for my undergraduate portfolio and for a competition entry, thus the text was already prescribed. I wanted to depart from a more standard setting of the Benedictus. I wanted to capture some amount of fear amongst the rejoicing in the Lord. Hence, I wanted the piece to have some very grand moments. I am not religious myself, but I imagine that even if I were joyously celebrating the Lord, there would be an underlying fear and awe considering He is all-powerful over me. I open with SSA repeating ‘blessed be’ over and over again to emphasize the wonder of what the Lord has done. I then get into the text with a tenor solo, then echoed by the lower voices, and finally joined by the upper voices for a mini-climax to celebrate the people being set free. After that, it immediately drops to just two voices quietly, out of which emerges the upper voices singing aleatorically to create a constantly changing texture, adding an element of mystery to the piece, over which I have the tenor solo and lower voices recite the rest of the text. Then, the pieces climaxes with all voices together blessing the Lord, eventually winding down to end similar to the opening with the repeated chanting of ‘blessed be’. I feel I captured well in this piece the nuance of the concept of God, mixing awe, mystery, joy, and fear.