It is a fair statement that almost everything I know about chorale music I learned from Dennis by singing under his direction. I am very grateful for that.
One piece with which I became acquainted while singing in the chorale was Heinrich Schuetz's setting of King David's Psalm 98. The piece is written for double choir, and one choir can be antiphonally disposed to create a sense of echos in the mountains.
While working with our temple's volunteer choir, it occurred to me that it would be nice to perform this piece with our profesional choir (then under the direction of Bill Aitken) as the antiphonal group. There were two issues however:
So I decided to try to reset the piece back to its original Hebrew text, while keeping the programatic aspects of Schuetz's music. The Hebrew text succeeds in this, with one interesting exception: Schuetz's German setting speaks of the Trompette and Posauna, and his music mimics the sound of those instruments. The Hebrew text, however, speaks of the Shofar and Hatzotarah in the opposite order, which would sound respectively as a trumpet and trombone. I therefore altered the Hebrew setting by exchanging those words to fit the programmatic aspect of the music.
Finally, the doxology had to go, and I replaced it with the standard blessing of Hallel (praise). Bonnie Templeton helped me with that part, and she appears as a coauthor of the adaptation.
I've written some other music, but much of it is not online yet.