A Hymn of Joy

Here a short piece I wrote for SATB choir, brass, timpani and organ. Sorry, I couldn't find lyrics for that and a more original tittle 😅

Any ideas for the lyrics are wellcome. 

Nice and simple and joyful - well done!  Not much to say about it - I wish I could review it more critically.  I guess you added the brass just for reverb inside an (assumed) church hall?  I wish the brass were more independent although I guess you already have enough counterpoint going on between the four voices.  Thanks for the music!

Is it part of this style to have voice and brass in unison?

Nice piece as always! (Even though I prefere your pieces that are in minor...) but I understand this is a hymn of joy. Great work!

Indeed, Luis! "Brass... also reproduce choral writing better than woodwind; in much early music, brass, especially trombones, simply double the voices."

11 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

Nice and simple and joyful - well done!  Not much to say about it - I wish I could review it more critically.  I guess you added the brass just for reverb inside an (assumed) church hall?  I wish the brass were more independent although I guess you already have enough counterpoint going on between the four voices.  Thanks for the music!

 

Thank's @PaperComposer, You are right, I added brass to give more power and resonance. I like to combination of choir, brass, organ and timpani and I think it fits pretty well with the character. 

11 hours ago, Hendrik Meniere said:

Nice piece as always! (Even though I prefere your pieces that are in minor...) but I understand this is a hymn of joy. Great work!

 

Thanks @Hendrik Meniere I know you prefer dark pieces. I also like them a lot, but sometimes I also like bright things 🙂.

I'm in a big change in my life. at 30th october I move permanently to Germany with my girlfriend. I have a job there as Engineer in the same company I worked a few years ago. I have already been 4 years in Germany, but my girlfriend can not speak German at all and only a very little English...So that's a bit change for both of us. And when big changes come, you have illusions and you also have fears. The day I wrote that I woke up with a lot of illusions and positive energy and I wanted to keep that with that piece to listen to it when low moments come...because now we need a lot of positive energy to face that stage in our lifes. 

I think music is totally connected with our feelings, and also a therapy for me as a composer.

Have a nice day you all 😉 

10 hours ago, pateceramics said:

Indeed, Luis! "Brass... also reproduce choral writing better than woodwind; in much early music, brass, especially trombones, simply double the voices."

 

Thanks Luis and @pateceramics!

Totally agree with your comment. In classical style and specially in a religious music with lyrics. It was a common practice to have 3 trombone (alto, tenor and brass) to double the lower voices. Mozart's Requiem you have 3 trombone doubling lower voices and 2 Basset horn/Clarinets doubling sopran and alto, but it's plenty of exemples of that. In that case I choose a typical brass quartet 2Trumpet + 2 Trombone, which fit nicely with the registers. 

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.  In classical days, singers read off single sheet voice parts.  The tenors just had the tenor part, no indication of what anyone else was doing, the basses just had the bass part, and likely all the basses were looking over each other's shoulders at a single copy by the light of one flickering candle...  Think of how difficult it is to sight read if all you have is your part, without being able to relate it to the rest of what's going on.  If you play the violin, you put your finger in the right place on the right string and you reliably get a certain note, but if you are a singer, you have to pluck your note out of thin air.  It's really hard to do accurately without being able to see the complete structure of the harmony you are a part of unless you happen to have perfect pitch, which is a rare gift.  Modern sheet music always gives singers all the choral parts together plus a reduction of any instrumental parts.  We're in the age of modern printing.  It's cheap and easy to do.  Classical period's solution to save time laboriously copying notes onto handwritten sheets was to have the brass double the singers so they couldn't get lost, and to strictly enforce voice leading rules so that parts tended to move by predictable stepwise motion as much as possible, rather than by leaps, which people are more likely to misjudge.  It was sheer self-preservation on the point of composers.  The alternative was a train wreck every time you premiered a new piece.  It's not like singers could go out and listen to a recording of the thing before they tried to sing it either.  

Very expressful piece and joyful song. Good instrumentation, I like the end with the timpani.

In measure 34 it would sound better if the soprano went up to G instead of F# on the first beat. That may need that you also maybe prepare with an F# in the end of measure 33, or a another D. It flows better and will fit more with the style (baroque/classicism). That is my opinion.

What a joyful piece! Made me smile, you're a wonderful composer. It reminds me of the proms concerts held every year in Britain where I live. I wish I had helpful things to say with regards to technical aspects of your music but I can only admire for now.

On 11/7/2020 at 8:01 PM, Olov said:

Very expressful piece and joyful song. Good instrumentation, I like the end with the timpani.

In measure 34 it would sound better if the soprano went up to G instead of F# on the first beat. That may need that you also maybe prepare with an F# in the end of measure 33, or a another D. It flows better and will fit more with the style (baroque/classicism). That is my opinion.

 

 

Hi @Olov: You idea of resolving the leading tone to the tonic as usual isn't bad, but I'd keep it like that, since Alto and Tenor are resolving to that tonic one octave below and to keep the progression on the Sopran. 

Happy you like that and thanks for your comments!

On 11/8/2020 at 2:14 AM, Papageno said:

What a joyful piece! Made me smile, you're a wonderful composer. It reminds me of the proms concerts held every year in Britain where I live. I wish I had helpful things to say with regards to technical aspects of your music but I can only admire for now.

 

Thanks @Papageno!