Completed October 2015.
Awaiting premiere.
Unfortunately the midi realization leaves much to be desired...

Written as the capstone project for my MA in music composition from the University of Bristol.  

I have always been troubled by the lack of understanding, perspective, and empathy that people have regarding the biblical narrative of the global flood.  Many people choose to focus on the positive aspects of the story (an old man and his family taking an extended cruise with a mating pair of every animal) and disregard the rest of the story (the utter destruction of every other living thing).  This never sat well with me as the most prominent motif in the Genesis account is not how Noah's family managed on the ark but how those less fortunate fared amidst the waves.  As a result, I was compelled to write a programmatic piece not from the perspective of Noah but of one of the millions, possibly billions, of people who were not saved.  Regardless if you believe in the validity of the story, it is one which describes the single most cataclysmic event in the history of our planet; much more deadly than any war, genocide, plague, meteor, or natural disaster.  Genesis states that the contemporaries of our ancestors offended their god to such a degree that he was compelled to say this of them and us in chapter 6, verse 7: 

"I will wipe man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for I regret having made them."

And thus, the piece was given its title: Paenitet enim me fecisse eos.

Text taken from the Latin Vulgate translation of Genesis.

PAENITET ENIM ME FECISSE EOS for orchestra and symphonic choir (midi realization)

" ...simultaneously innovative, intellectually stimulating, but most of all emotionally moving." - Maria Choban, Oregon ArtsWatch

PAENITET ENIM ME FECISSE EOS for orchestra and symphonic choir (midi realization)

Brandon Stewart