Kevin Gunia
composer and pianist

Upon studying the Mass Ordinary for the first time, I realized the great difficulty in setting the Credo. It contains such a great quantity of text and doesn't easily fit into a form. Despite that, composers have successfully tackled the text, from Machaut and Josquin to Bach and Beethoven. My own solution was to set the majority of the text in recitative, thus covering a great amount of text quickly. I took this idea to the other Mass parts as well, creating a speech-like Mass which goes by unusually fast. Using the Credo as a centerpiece, I used its motives, which became the basis for all the other movements.