One of the pieces of this masterful orchestration is entitled "Gethsemane."
As I have performed this song, the Spirit has given me a glimpse of the depth of what went on in Gethsemane. A glimpse I have never had, even when I lived in Jerusalem and went to this garden many times a week. Even when I had a very sacred physical experience in Gethsemane, there was no music to make what I felt there come to life.
Now there is.
There are impressive soloists representing Peter, John, Thomas, Judas, Mary Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Pilate, and a few others. But the composer chose not to have a soloist represent the Savior. He chose a cello. Here is a low quality video of what this song sounds like without the choir:
There is a moment in this song after the cello personifies the expressions of the Savior during the atonement where the choir takes over and starts to sing the words of the Savior as He pleads that the bitter cup be taken from him. A moment when I cannot let myself think about the meaning of what we are portraying, or I lose my composure and with it my ability to perform. It is a sacred, powerful and intense moment.
The Abba moment.
The orchestra and choir mesh to produce an indelible expression of music that portrays the infinite suffering. Suffering of a God, made human, for this very moment. The music starts in piano (very soft) and grows over about ten measures at which point the orchestra is nearly snapping their strings and the choir is all but screaming.
Every time this moment happens, I look at the director who is flexing virtually every muscle in his body as he rips this sound from the collective soul of the choir and orchestra.
ALA LO TSAVANI, ANT TSAVANACH ------- But not my will, Thy will
O ABBA! ------- O Father!
Even amidst this Abba cry and the awful and amazing expiation of the sins of every living soul in the universe, He was the Director.
The Director of Gethsemane.
At any moment, Jesus of Nazareth could have put the baton down and stopped the awful and infinite music of the wrath of the atonement. He could have chosen not to go through with it. But He didn't. He kept the music going to the bitter end.
"---how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not. For behold, I God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;...which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit---and would that I might not drink the bitter cup and shrink---" (D&C 19:15-19).