2 Variations on "Gloria in excelsis Deo"

This is something I decided to work on for a very limited amount of time over the past two days for the Christmas Event this year!  It's a variations piece on the famous Polish Christmas Carol "Gloria in excelsis Deo".  Those eponymous words are actually in Latin, but the rest of the carol is in Polish, and I made sure to go in and include all the proper accent marks and special characters which is actually a little tricky to enter into Musescore.  This is one of those rare pieces that I wish I had Cantamus for, since it would increase the realism of the piece to have the actual words sung, especially when the Tenors and Basses are in canonic imitation with the Sopranos and Altos.  I would really appreciate any comments, critiques, feedback or even just observations that you may have.  Thanks for listening and Merry Christmas!

Edit:  I've now done a Mash-up of this Christmas Carol (actually titled "Gdy się Chrystus rodzi" or "When Christ is being born") with "Angels we have heard on high".  Check it out here:

The harmony and dynamics are really awesome. The harmony starts off pretty tame but I really enjoy how it deviates from the norm, and gets adventurous. I think the choir samples don't really do you justice though about halfway through. And Cantamus may be better for vocalization and accuracy, but most likely wouldn't come close to sounding as good as some higher quality choir samples that can sound out specific vowel sounds.

As far as the lyrics, a minor critique (and I only know this because I am in the process of creating lyrics in Music Jotter). When you split a word between beats, the hyphen is used for this split, rather than the space.

1:20, are these parallel 4ths or 5ths? If so, was this intentional?

And I really love the part at 0:50. You were able to get this part sounding pretty realistic especially with the crescendo!

Thanks for your comments Mike!

4 minutes ago, chopin said:

1:20, are these parallel 4ths or 5ths? If so, was this intentional?

Yes there's parallel 4ths between the Bass and Soprano for a measure there and it was intentional.  Thanks again!

A great little work. The choral variation is fantastic, I really like the way the harmonies are original and original. The polytonal part is so smooth and flows so well, it surprises me. Thank you.
 

Hey Peter,

As I have said before, the polytonal variation is wierdly wonderful like a sweet with a salty coating which makes the sweet sweeter. 

I would love the piano accompaniment to continue after the intro!

Thx for sharing!

Henry

Like Henry, I would have liked the piano to come back, but as is it serves as a nice intro to the piece. 

I'm curious on the form. It feels unfinished to me, like you were experimenting with reharming a tune you knew well. Why only two variations, and why the ones you chose? I'm assuming it's because you were having fun with a just for fun thing we do here, but maybe you'll add variations in the future? Is it because variations can get stale after a while?

Doesn't matter really. You have a way with harmony, and this was no exception. Well done mate 👍 

3 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I'm curious on the form. It feels unfinished to me, like you were experimenting with reharming a tune you knew well. Why only two variations, and why the ones you chose? I'm assuming it's because you were having fun with a just for fun thing we do here, but maybe you'll add variations in the future? Is it because variations can get stale after a while?

Well, all my variations projects tend to snowball into giant projects and I didn't want that to happen with this piece.  I just wanted it to be a short Christmas diversion before going back to my main variation work that I'm working on right now which is much more substantial.  It's possible that I'll pick this piece up again in the future.  Thanks for listening and commenting!

There seems to be 2 slight variations in the melody of the verse of this carol / hymn.  Why. If anyone can explain the reason for this please private message me.

 I'm sorry.  I was talking about the carol, "Angels we have heard on high".  This is about something different?

5 hours ago, Bill G said:

I'm sorry.  I was talking about the carol, "Angels we have heard on high".  This is about something different?

Ah, yes.  Sorry for the confusion.  The English Christmas Carol "Angels we have heard on high" also prominently features the Latin lyrics "Gloria in excelsis Deo" just like this Polish Christmas Carol.  They are quite similar!  Thanks for your interest.  It would be interesting to combine the two carols in a mash-up variation of some sort.  Too bad I didn't think of it this year!  LoL

On 12/25/2024 at 8:33 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Ah, yes.  Sorry for the confusion.  The English Christmas Carol "Angels we have heard on high" also prominently features the Latin lyrics "Gloria in excelsis Deo" just like this Polish Christmas Carol.  They are quite similar!  Thanks for your interest.  It would be interesting to combine the two carols in a mash-up variation of some sort.  Too bad I didn't think of it this year!  LoL

I have now done this aforementioned mash-up!  Thanks for the idea @Bill G!  Here it is: