Selected Works
Speravit Anima Mea (2022)
Two voices
Toskauda (2021)
Solo violin
Deintimat (2018)
String quartet & bass
News
“Simple, Profound, and Based on the Sonic Structure of the Universe” composer Xanthe Kraft
Composing for Christ: New Mass Setting written by local composer
https://dioceseofspokane.org/news/new-mass-setting
Composer-In-Residence Premieres Mass at St Gertrude's
https://www.stgertrudes.org/composer-in-residence-premieres-mass-at-st-gertrudes
About Xanthe
In the crevices of hardship, beauty is found not only within this world, but surrounding, and sustaining it.
Beauty makes me, and I make it known.
Xanthe Kraft is a composer, educator, and chant specialist dedicated to serving Jesus in the Eucharist through Sacred Music. A 2021 GIVEN fellow, she created BEATA: a method and apostolate which supports Catholic Schools in teaching the church's treasury of Sacred Music through right worship. She believes the Little Flower's example applies to the liturgy. Words chanted in simple tones with great love can lead to the depths of Beauty, Himself.
Xanthe composes for and from Liturgical worship, specializing in vocal and string writing. Her work "Speravit Anima Mea" premiered at Sacra Liturgia Conference in 2022. She performed with the Schola Cantus Angelorum at the Sacred Liturgy Conference in 2021, was the 2019 Artist-in-Residence at St. Gertrude's Monastery and a 2017 Nadia Boulanger Institute Composition Fellow. She has studied Counterpoint at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In addition to directing and composing sacred works for Liturgical music, she composes narratives for strings and small ensembles depicting stories of the soul.
Xanthe received her Master of Arts degree in Digital Musics at Dartmouth College, completing both a compositional thesis entitled "Deintimat" and a written thesis on Bonaventure's Soul's Journey Into God and the metaphysics of music, advised by Michael Casey, Michelle Lou, and Ashley Fure. She also completed her Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth, majoring in Computer Science modified with Digital Arts, with a minor in Philosophy.
Her work has been performed by the Catholic Sacred Music Project, Yvette Kraft, Mivos Quartet, Sound Energy Trio, and Ensemble L'Itinéraire and her compositions have been utilized in parish liturgies across the country as well as in festivals such as SHIFT: Dartmouth’s New Music Festival, Dartmouth Digital Arts Exhibition, Break-It-Down Boston.
Xanthe is from Spokane, Washington. She has taught Math, Science and Choir to middle school scholars and cantored and directed liturgies in both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form across the country. As of 2024, she has become a sister with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, TN.