Dan Forrest’s musical tribute to Genesis

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 26th.

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Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a soundtrack for the Creation story.

Writing choral music is all in a day’s work for composer Dan Forrest. Recently, he wrote a 72-minute composition inspired by the Creation story. Here’s WORLD’s Bekah McCallum.

BEKAH MCCALLUM: When he gets in a creative rut, Dan Forrest heads outside. What was a pandemic project morphed into a garden with a Narnia-style lamp post and even a brook with a footbridge.

FORREST: One of the best things I do is just get out back here and, and work in the garden. And it's the exact opposite of everything that I do in the office there because it's tangible, it's visible, it's still creating beauty. So, in a sense, I’m still doing the same thing, but I’m kind of doing it more immediately.

When Forrest isn’t gardening—or visiting gardens—he’s a full-time choral music composer. His arrangements and compositions have been performed by groups like Voces8 and the Brigham Young University Choir.

His best-known work, Requiem for the Living, has been performed over a thousand times since it debuted in 2013. His most significant accomplishment is an oratorio or choral piece with orchestral accompaniment. It’s called Creation. He describes the work as a soundtrack of sorts for Genesis 1 and 2.

It’s not the first oratorio to take its cue from the story of how God made the world.

HAYDN And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the water which were above the firmament. And it was so.

Over 225 years ago, German composer Joseph Haydn wrote Die Schopfung or The Creation.

FORREST: It's um it’s this venerable piece of choral repertoire that's been around for 225 years, and people still sing it. There's probably dozens of performances every year still, in the US, let alone worldwide. It’s lasted so long.

Inspired by Haydn, Forrest decided to compose a contemporary version while giving his own oratorio a sense of permanence. That’s part of why much of the text for Forrest’s Creation comes from Latin liturgies.

FORREST: So I'm trying to make these ties to the past, both textually and musically. There are these things that come back that Christians have been singing this hymn for over a millennium.

You can hear that here in his first movement as the choir chants “Veni, Creator Spiritus” or “Come, Holy Spirit, Creator.”

There are twelve movements in all. Forrest divides the oratorio in three main sections: the Godhead, the days of Creation, and a final celebration of everything that God calls good.

The deep bass solo in movement three might remind attentive listeners of a beloved story.

FORREST: You can't really set CS Lewis to music, because the estate won't allow it. But CS Lewis described what Aslan's song was like in that chapter of The Magician's Nephew, and I tried to embody the song.

For the movements about the days of Creation, Forrest didn’t want to just copy-and-paste the text from Genesis 1 and 2.

FORREST: I didn't want to write like: “In the beginning, God created light, and there was light, and the evening and the morning for the first day, bom bom.” That's more like the 1800s approach.

Instead, the pieces take their cue from the day of Creation they represent. Here’s an excerpt from the movement called “Deep Blue.”

The oratorio’s energy gradually builds until the final two movements. Movement 11 is titled “Do It Again,” and the lyrics are based on a poem by G.K. Chesterton.

DO IT AGAIN: It may not be necessity that makes all daisies alike. Perhaps God makes every daisy one at a time because he never grown tired of making them.

For Forrest, composing Creation took much longer than 6 days. Almost a year after the oratorio first premiered, he was still tweaking the score. It hasn’t helped that he’s his own worst critic and, in his words, a “classic overthinker.” The music could challenge audiences as well.

FORREST: It's one thing to write a little four minute piece to be sung as part of a worship service. It's another thing to try to hang on to people, especially in the 21st century with their attention spans for this long, for 70 some minutes.

Since Creation could be tricky for choral groups to perform, Forrest has to reckon with the fact that it might not be quite as well-received as some of his other works.

FORREST: Whether mine makes it or not, you know, only time will tell, maybe we'll have three or four performances, and everybody will be like, it's too long, and it's too hard. And you don't want to do it. The goal is hopefully not, haha.

Forrest certainly wants the oratorio to stand the test of time. But regardless, he hopes that whenever it’s performed it will point his listeners to Christ.

FORREST: Beauty doesn't redeem us. But it can point us to the fact that we long for redemption, and that there is a Redeemer to be had.

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