Second Song of Isaiah

The Second Song of Isaiah is a vocal setting of the biblical canticle drawn from Isaiah 55:6–11. Beginning with the invitation to “seek the Lord,” the text gradually expands in scale—from the individual act of seeking and returning, to the distance between heaven and earth, and finally to images of rain, snow, seed, and growth.

The music follows that expansion. Intimate and reflective passages give way to broader gestures as the imagery of the text opens outward, while the natural cadence of the words remains central to the vocal writing. Rather than treating the canticle simply as a liturgical text, the setting explores its poetry: the relationship between things spoken and things fulfilled, between what falls from above and what takes root below.

At its center is an idea that reaches beyond the sacred setting of the words—the possibility that something sent into the world can take on a life beyond its origin, producing consequences that cannot entirely be known in advance.