Agnus Dei (from ‘Ashes of Roses’) (download)

“Agnus Dei” is taken from Jocelyn Hagen’s requiem for choir and orchestra titled Ashes of Roses. Ashes of Roses was first premiered by a volunteer chorus and orchestra at St. Olaf College in 2003.
In 2010, St. Catherine University, in conjunction with the St. Catherine Choral Society, under the direction of Dr. Patricia Cahalan Connors, commissioned a completion of the work, in which two new movements were added: the “Dies Irae” and “Agnus Dei.” Ashes of Roses, in its new version, was premiered May 8, 2011, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Agnus Dei,

             Lamb of God,

qui tollis peccata mundi

            who takes away the sin of the world

miserere nobis.

           have mercy on us. 

Behold, I tell you a mystery:
We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound
and the dead will be raised incorruptible. Behold, I tell you a mystery:
and we shall be changed.

~ Traditional Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead I Corinthians 15:51-52