Hip a capella quartet New York Polyphony, with a new album out, commissioned Missa Charles Darwin from Gregory Brown in response to the 200th birth anniversary in 2009 of the man who wrote The Origin of Species. It begins with a quotation from Darwin’s The Descent of Man that is perhaps more timeless than any sacred text:
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
The first 3 minutes of this video feature the opening of the Missa:
