"Elegy: Jesus Wept" is written in memory of and dedicated to Texas Band Director J.W. King (1920-1997), and his fifty years of touching the lives of students through his teaching and love of music. This work consists of three continuous sections that are separated by cathartic changes in musical texture, dynamics, tempos and tonal centers. The first section begins with a plaintive melody that freely passes between instrumental groups. The melody slowly transforms in character, becoming more agitated and moving in nature, and closes the first section with a dramatic climax. More pensive in nature, the second section begins with a new melody introduced by a solo horn over the newly introduced piano timbre. The melody is soon joined in turn by the flute, clarinet, trumpet and oboe with increasing density of parts. Soon the entire ensemble meets with a complex canonic statement of the horn melody, bringing this section to a close. An ethereal third section begins with three statements of the new fanfare/calling motive produced from musical material presented earlier. The work concludes with a free-timed repetition of melodic material as the musical texture slowly transforms into a "celestial choir."
