Welcome to Anthem 4 in my attempt to write a new choir anthem every week for a year. I’m Kevin Mulryne and I hope you will enjoy listening to my progress throughout 2024. Please do visit the website Anthem52.com, follow along on x.com - @realanthem52 or Instagram - @realanthem52 and send me a message to [email protected].

This has been an unusual week in a number of ways. Firstly, I wrote two new anthems and I explain that in the episode. I have also been unwell and off work with a nasty cold but fortunately there were no choral services at Holy Trinity this weekend which gave me a bit of recuperation time.

I said last week that I was going to try something a little darker than last week’s irrepressibly cheerful piece. I did try. However, I was reminded of a report I once read which said that actors who played characters suffering from mental illness were prone to it themselves. You can understand why - if you act like you are experiencing symptoms for 3 hours every night, it surely must affect you. I’m not likening my little composition efforts to someone playing King Lear every day - that would be disingenuous - but when I tried to use words from a random psalm about suffering and asking for forgiveness, the music I came up with made me feel bad when I was working on it. I now know that I was getting sick at the time so I think that had a lot more to do with it than the music itself but I had to abandon that anthem completely.

Instead I opted for some verses from psalm 65 or lxv in Roman numerals.

Words for Anthem 4:

Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and receivest unto thee:

he shall dwell in thy court, and shall be satisfied with the pleasures of your house, even of thy holy temple

Thou shalt shew us wonderful things in thy righteousness, O God of our salvation:

thou that are the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of them that remain in the broad sea:

Well, what do you think? Let me know on X.com @realanthem52, as a comment below or via email [email protected]

I hope you will join me next week for a new episode - and a new anthem - only 48 to go - but until then the question remains - will I make it to Anthem 52?