And I Saw a New Heaven

Since Covid made singing in groups so unsafe, choirs have taken a real hit to their membership, and many are still smaller than they were before the pandemic.  I wrote this piece to be performable by a small group.  The range of the baritone part should be manageable by either tenors or basses, since they are generally the smallest sections in a choir, to help with balance issues.  The baritone part does divide a bit for the sake of interest and to give any bass 2s a break from their high range, but as the piano and other parts are generally covering those splits, they can be done away with if a group only has a single male voice, or a conductor chooses to put all their tenors and basses on a single line to improve balance against larger soprano and alto sections.  The ranges of the soprano and alto parts are also moderate enough that an alto 1 could sing soprano or a soprano 2 could sing alto in the case of unbalanced sections.  

I've mainly limited dynamics to mp and mf, since smaller groups are more likely to have blending and balance issues at very loud dynamics or sound timid at softer ones.  

I'd love to know your thoughts, particularly pianists!  (I'm not a pianist).  Does anything seem particularly awkward, or should be written for the other hand?  Would the thorny accidentals at measure 63-64 be easier to sight-read at speed if I used the Cb and Bbb enharmonic equivalents, so those righthand notes were in paired thirds going up and down the scale?  

Thank you for your thoughts!

Revelation 21 KJV

1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. 

Hi @pateceramics,

Overall the piece is very soothing! I love the Bb Aeolian very much. Very nice harmony in b.63 with the Gb minor! Ending on a C major second inversion seems abrupt and not conclusive for me though.

15 hours ago, pateceramics said:

The range of the baritone part should be manageable by either tenors or basses, since they are generally the smallest sections in a choir, to help with balance issues.

As a second bass I think the range is very manageable here! I sometimes have to sing the high G even though I am a bass and can barely sing it without squeezing my voice out.

15 hours ago, pateceramics said:

I'd love to know your thoughts, particularly pianists!  (I'm not a pianist).  Does anything seem particularly awkward, or should be written for the other hand?

i think the piano part is definitely fine throughout the piece. I might add more movements for the piano in the middle section in b.44 but I know you may be aiming at rhythmic contrast here so it's perfectly fine!

15 hours ago, pateceramics said:

Would the thorny accidentals at measure 63-64 be easier to sight-read at speed if I used the Cb and Bbb enharmonic equivalents, so those righthand notes were in paired thirds going up and down the scale?  

I think using Cb and Bbb better there since it's Gb minor there, and using the enharmonic will reduce the alternation of A flat and A natural in b.63 and 64.

Thanks for sharing!

Henry

9 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Overall the piece is very soothing! I love the Bb Aeolian very much. Very nice harmony in b.63 with the Gb minor! Ending on a C major second inversion seems abrupt and not conclusive for me though.

Thank you Henry!  I'm glad you enjoyed it.  I've always loved the Bainton setting of this text, and wanted to try my own modest effort.  I'm afraid I do like an abrupt and inconclusive ending. This probably says something about me psychologically.  😄

9 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

As a second bass I think the range is very manageable here! I sometimes have to sing the high G even though I am a bass and can barely sing it without squeezing my voice out.

Good to hear!  I wanted this piece to be possible for a wide variety of groups.  I had a performance by a choir this winter that needed to make some adjustments to my piece to work for one of their basses who was singing tenor since they were short on male singers.  Since that's a common problem, I thought I would write something that worked well for a group like that.  

9 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

i think the piano part is definitely fine throughout the piece. I might add more movements for the piano in the middle section in b.44 but I know you may be aiming at rhythmic contrast here so it's perfectly fine!

Good to know nothing is too awkward.  Yes, I was looking for contrast there.  I wanted to give the support of a very minimal piano line, to help keep the pitch up and the rhythm true, without it being very prominent, and then build back up to more voices.  

9 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I think using Cb and Bbb better there since it's Gb minor there, and using the enharmonic will reduce the alternation of A flat and A natural in b.63 and 64.

Thank you!  I will make that change on my final version, but leave the pdf here unedited so people reading this thread can tell what we were talking about. 🙂

Thank you for all your thoughts!  I really appreciate you taking the time for discussion!

On 3/27/2023 at 2:53 PM, pateceramics said:

Since Covid made singing in groups so unsafe, choirs have taken a real hit to their membership, and many are still smaller than they were before the pandemic.

Very sad to hear this. I hope situation comes back to normal in the following years.

Regarding the piano part, as Henry said there's nothing particularly wrong with it, though I'm sure certain parts will benefit of pedalling or slurs, specially the ones that seem to be "floating" due to the absence of left hand (M22-23 for example). I am also not sure of how dense it may sound in a real interpretation, specially sections like M44-47.

Why is the interval M40-43 using small heads in the piano part?

I would be glad to listen to the real interpretation of this piece, since the placeholder instruments used for the choir don't make justice to it.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.
 

3 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Regarding the piano part, as Henry said there's nothing particularly wrong with it, though I'm sure certain parts will benefit of pedalling or slurs, specially the ones that seem to be "floating" due to the absence of left hand (M22-23 for example). I am also not sure of how dense it may sound in a real interpretation, specially sections like M44-47.

Why is the interval M40-43 using small heads in the piano part?

Thanks for taking a listen, Omicron!  In choral music in the US, piano accompaniments frequently leave out pedal markings and slurs to allow the music to be a printed a  little larger, while keeping page turns to a minimum.  It just gives you a tiny bit more room on the page.  Since I'm not a pianist, it seems wise to take advantage of that convention and let the player decide how best to handle stylistic issues.  

Measure 40-43 is another peculiarity of choral writing.  The small heads indicate that the piano is resting there... probably...  When the piano tacets, leaving the singers on their own, it is still helpful to be able to see the choral notes, so that the pianist can easily play along with those parts during rehearsals, or even during the performance, if a decision is made last minute that the choir is having pitch issues when singing alone.  You can also leave bars like that empty in a piano or organ part, but having the notes written out means the accompanist doesn't need to shoot their eyes up to the choral parts and read across four staves.  

Thank your for your thoughts!  The two choirs I sing with regularly are both smaller than they were before the pandemic, but both are slowly growing again, thankfully.  If we can manage to make the finances work until we get all the way back to normal, we'll be okay, but it's a challenge.  You can't perform the big pieces without a big choir, and it's the big pieces that usually sell the most tickets.

1 hour ago, pateceramics said:

In choral music in the US, piano accompaniments frequently leave out pedal markings and slurs to allow the music to be a printed a  little larger, while keeping page turns to a minimum.

Oh good to know, a skilled pianist will definitely put pedals here and there at will yes. It's also good to learn about other uses of small notes I didn't know of. I only knew about their use in cadenzas, ossias, appogiaturas & acciacaturas.

I am glad that choirs you are in are slowly recovering and growing, despite the natural issues that can come after such an event.

Kind regards!!