A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer

Once again, the four horns sustain the concluding chord while the solo tenor and a bass from the choir sing a single complete melodic statement of the basic twelve-tone series, repeating the last line of the previous section's text: "then do we with patience wait for it."

[6] The second movement is an elaborate scena for the narrator (making his first appearance in the work) and soloists, accompanied by the orchestra, describing the trial and stoning of St Stephen.

[7] Throughout the cantata, Stravinsky employs a method of hexachordal rotation, which he learned from the works of his friend Ernst Krenek, to generate arrays of pitches.

By moving the first note in each hexachord to the end and then transposing the result to begin on E♭, the rotation scheme produces: Stravinsky then in many cases would travel systematically through the array to derive long melodic lines, as he does with this array to produce the canonic passage in the alto and tenor voices on the words "Oh My God, if it Bee Thy pleasure to cut me off before night", in bars 226–238 near the beginning of the third movement (Prayer).

Double basses, piano, harp, and gongs, continue their ostinato from the opening canonic section, based on the first hexachord of the inversion.

The two soloists in unison introduce the final choral Alleluia, alternating with passages in the strings, once again combining the four forms of the series, only now with the first hexachord of each retrograded.