Exaltation (2011) was commissioned by the Seraphim Singers on the occasion of their 15th anniversary. The work is dedicated to the group and their inspiring music director, Jennifer Lester, who premiered it on November 5, 2011 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The work sets a text by poet Franz Werfel (1890–1945) in an English translation by Edith Abercrombie Snow. Born in Prague, Werfel spent most of his career in Austria as an active writer and intellectual. (He also became the third husband of Alma Mahler.) As a Jew, Werfel fled Austria for France in 1938 and then further to the United States, where he made his home in California for the final years of his life. With Werfel’s involvement, Edith Snow produced the first English language volume of his poetry in 1945.