Bogoroditse djevo for mixed choir

This choral piece was composed in April 2020 and it was designed to celebrate my 15th anniversary since me and my wife became the couple. 🙂 Hence the premiere took place on social media on 30th May. Due to quarantine 16 students of Conservatoire for Music and Ballet Ljubljana accepted this "mission impossible" and recorded the composition throughout the May and put all separate recordings together. It was probably a heck of a challenge but the result is quite impressive. The choral sound is very unique though... 😉 

It is one of my most inspired choral works in recent years and it has a special emotional component. 🙂 The musical language is generally tonal, with frequent add of lydian augmented fourth and sudden surprise chromaticism. This is also prominent at the end of composition when the harmony seems to be content resting on A flat major chord but it ends with sudden C major (I simply heard it to be appropriate).

Gorgeous and stirring! It had a medieval sound to it which I found very fitting, considering the text is in Old Church Slavonic. The choir members did a good job recording this virtually. I hope your wife likes it as much as I did! 🙂 

1 hour ago, Tónskáld said:

Gorgeous and stirring! It had a medieval sound to it which I found very fitting, considering the text is in Old Church Slavonic. The choir members did a good job recording this virtually. I hope your wife likes it as much as I did! 🙂 

 

She did. 🙂 We listened to it together for six times in a row. I also did not hear the preview before it was released so it was fresh to me as well. 🙂

woah. First ima give props to whoever set that up because it sounded very good. Secondly, this sounded hella fun to sing. It’s a shame it won’t be sung for a long time with the way choirs are going. But this has all of the best parts of traditional orthodox music (low bass parts, melody in the soprano and alto with a descant in the tenor. As well as the cool changes throughout. I want to sing it now lol. Also I love the song choice, choosing bogoroditse, which is a beautiful text I think everyone loves. Gorgeous.

Beautiful! I love the Ab major to C major movement, it occurs multiple times in the piece, so for seems like a very good choice to end on.
The canonic - as well as the rhythmic elements give the music a real sense of drive.

Last but not least, this rendition is really remarkable, especially given the circumstances!

On 6/2/2020 at 9:21 AM, Some Guy That writes Music said:

woah. First ima give props to whoever set that up because it sounded very good. Secondly, this sounded hella fun to sing. It’s a shame it won’t be sung for a long time with the way choirs are going. But this has all of the best parts of traditional orthodox music (low bass parts, melody in the soprano and alto with a descant in the tenor. As well as the cool changes throughout. I want to sing it now lol. Also I love the song choice, choosing bogoroditse, which is a beautiful text I think everyone loves. Gorgeous.

 

I am hoping for a live premiere in autumn... Yes, you are right, the choirs will be among the last ensembles to regain liberty to perform live again...

Hi Sojar.  I like your harmonic contrasts in this piece.  Looking at the score I can see that you use chromatic mediants which always excel at creating that kind of harmonic contrast.  All your harmonic choices are good.  I guess another thing that you do to create harmonic contrast is alternate between major and minor chords but without staying diatonic to any one key which makes each chord sound fresh.  If I ever endeavor to write a piece for choir I'll know where to find a great example of choral harmony.  😃  Great job.

Hi @Sojar Voglar, that's very beautiful piece. It reminds me a bit of Veni veni Emmanuel by Zoltán Kodály, and since you come from Slovenia I thought maybe it's based on the folklore or style from your country. Is it inspired in your folkore or traditions? Just curiosity...

Thanks for posting!