Anthem 52

Welcome to Anthem 33 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 week's text comes from a very long psalm - cxix (119). It is split up in the Irish Book of Common Prayer into many sections and the words I chose are verses 145 - 152. There are a lot more words than I usually set and I think that's at least partly down to how the process went. It was comparatively easy to write this anthem. It seemed to flow better than last week's. I don't know if the end result is better or worse but the resulting anthem feels fairly complete and coherent.

I call with my whole heart : hear me, O Lord, I will keep thy statutes.

Yea, even unto thee do I call : help me, and I shall keep thy testimonies.

Early in the morning do I cry unto thee : for in thy word is my trust.

Mine eyes prevent the night-watches : that I might be occupied in thy words.

Hear my voice, O Lord, according unto thy loving-kindness : quicken me according as thou art wont.

They draw nigh that of malice persecute me : and are far from thy law.

Be thou nigh at hand, O Lord : for all thy commandments are true.

As concerning thy testimonies, I have known long since ; that thou hast grounded them for ever.

Welcome to Anthem 32 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 week, everything seemed to take a long time. I eventually found some words to use, buried in Psalm cvi (106) that seemed to lend themselves to an anthem. I didn't have many preconceptions about how the anthem should sound this week beyond the fact that it needed to be unaccompanied. I let the writing 'decide' where it wanted to go and added in some harmonic changes. Interestingly, I thought it sounded a bit like some of my other compositions so perhaps others will as well.

So here are the words I chose:

Deliver us O Lord our God, and gather us from among the heathen : that we may give thanks unto thy holy Name, and make our boast of thy praise.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting, and world without end : and let all the people say, Amen.

Welcome to Anthem 31 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].

It was back to Compline this week - again. Imagine my surprise when I found these words, very close to the others I had used for Lux and Nox:

I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only, that makest me dwell in safety.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

As usual, there was a word that when translated into Latin follows the same pattern as the previous two anthems - peace - pax. So the theme and mood of this week's anthem was set. It was time to write for choir and organ, so it would be another challenge and, presumably, it would result in a different sound to Nox and Lux ... or maybe not. Anyway, here are the Latin words:

In pace in idipsum * dormiam et requiescam.

Quoniam tu Domine singulariter in spe constituisti me.

Gloria Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Welcome to Anthem 30 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 week I hit upon a neat idea. When I composed the unaccompanied anthem number 26, Nox, I found the words in the service of Compline. So I decided to go back to that service and look for some more. A passage that caught my attention was this one in English:

Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.

This theme of light stood out. Then I realised that the Latin for light is 'lux'. Perhaps it would be possible to make this new anthem a partner for 'Nox', meaning night. So we have Nox and Lux. Listening to them now as a pair, there isn't a lot of difference in how they sound which could have been done to stress the difference in the meaning of the titles but never mind.  

I chose to use the Latin words again - it's just a single verse of Psalm iv (4) after which I added 'Amen' like the end of the psalm in Compline.

Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui Domine: dedisti laetitiam in corde meo.

Welcome to Anthem 29 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 was the last week of the academic year and my choir sang a final choral evensong at the ancient Guild Chapel in Stratford. It was founded by the mediaeval Guild of the Holy Cross and is just across the road from the site of William Shakespeare's final house in the town. William's father is reputed to have been behind the whitewashing of the elaborate mediaeval wall paintings in the Chapel that have been restored recently.

When I attended King Edward VI School, and then my son Edward did the same, school services were held in the Guild Chapel. The school was founded by the Guild to provide education for their sons and William Shakespeare is a former pupil.

It has been a lovely tradition for a number of years for the final Evensong of the year to be at the Guild Chapel which has a much better acoustic than Holy Trinity Church. There is also a recently-renovated organ there which is very loud! Unfortunately, the choir stalls are at the other end of the building to the organ so it can be tricky to coordinate the music. However, it was a great occasion despite the sweltering heat that saw one tenor wilting towards the end of the service.

Anyway, back to this week's anthem. When looking at the psalms set for this week, I spotted the words of a rather well-known anthem - "They that go down to the sea in ships : and occupy their business in great waters ; These men see the works of the Lord : and his wonders in the deep." The setting of these words by Sumsion is one of my favourite anthems. Not everyone shares my opinion of course. The section 'stagger like a drunken man' can be taken as a bit daft but I think it's fun. Finding these lines wasn't really a surprise because my choir sang this anthem last week. It was 'Sea Sunday' after all.

I didn't try and do my own version of this part of Psalm cvii (107) but rather the opening using these words:

O give thanks unto the Lord for he is gracious : and his mercy endureth for ever

Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed : and delivered from the hand of the enemy ;

And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west : from the north, and from the south.

Welcome to Anthem 28 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].

After the success of using words from Compline for Anthem 26 (Nox), I decided to mine the same source for this week. This time I chose words meaning the following in English - "Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy Name. Leave us not, O Lord our God." In Latin it's:

Tu autem in nobis es, Domine, et nomen sanctum tuum invocatum est super nos:

ne derelinquas nos, Domine Deus noster.

Welcome to Anthem 27 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].

If you are reading these show notes as soon as it they are released in July 2024, I am currently on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean celebrating my 30th Wedding Anniversary. As a result, as I have mentioned a couple of times, I have posted an anthem I wrote in January 2024 rather than a brand new one. So the project still remains a new anthem every week, as long as you are prepared to let me have a little artistic license. The reason I am able to publish the anthem now is that I didn't win the competition. It was great experience though.

The rules of the Isacc Watts Composition Competition included that the words must be by Watts (a prolific 18th Century hymn writer) and the anthem had to be for choir and organ - with the option of a part for a school choir in unison.

Here are the words I chose from Watt's catalogue:

Come Holy Spirit, hea'vnly Dove,

With all Thy quick'ning powers

Kindle a flame of sacred love in these cold hearts of ours.

Look how we grovel here below,

Fond of these trifling toys,

Our souls can neither fly nor go

To reach eternal joys.

In vain we strive to rise

And our devotion dies.

Welcome to Anthem 26 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].

Well, I have made to halfway in my epic project. I have produced 26 anthems in 6 months. I’m not delighted with all of them but I am delighted that I have tackled my decades-long compositional inactivity. Hopefully, there is plenty more to come in months 7-12 of 2024.

This week I am celebrating my 30th Wedding Anniversary by going on the trip of a lifetime with my beautiful wife, Sarah. As I have previously mentioned, next week’s anthem will be the one I wrote in January but this week’s is a brand new one.

While hunting for text to use, I came across an article about Compline - often the final church service of the day. Singing Compline is one of my favourite choral activities partly due to its use of plainsong and partly due to its words which seem to be perfect for a late evening service.

The English version of the opening sentence is ‘the Lord almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end'. I've always loved that phrase. When I saw the Latin original of the opening prayer, I thought it would make a great unaccompanied anthem.

Here are the words:

Noctem quietam et finem perfectum concedat nobis Dominus omnipotens. Amen.

Welcome to Anthem 25 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 week marks the beginning of the busiest - and the calmest - time for me so far this year. It's my wife and my 30th Wedding Anniversary and we are going on the 'trip of a lifetime' to The Maldives. This means that I am in the process of writing and organising anthems to ensure there isn't a gap in my progress towards Anthem 52. Clearly, time has been squeezed and so I haven't been able to create a Logic Pro version of this week's anthem, nor will I be able to for the next two weeks either because I will be out of the country and have to set everything to publish while I am away automatically.

So there will be new anthems in these 3 weeks but the content published will be more minimal than usual. I also intend to 'cheat' by using the anthem I wrote earlier in the year for the composition competition as Anthem 27. I hope you don't mind.

Anyway, this week I completed Anthem 25 using Psalm V (5), set for this week in the Church of England Lectionary.

Here are the words:

Ponder my words, O Lord : consider my meditation.

O hearken thou unto the voice of my calling, my King and my God : for unto thee will I make my prayer.

My voice shalt thou hear betimes, O Lord : early in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.

For thou art the God that hast no pleasure in wickedness : neither shall any evil dwell with thee.

Welcome to Anthem 24 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].

I managed to make a little progress with the new Plugin this week, which is pleasing. Without going into a lot of technical explanation (which would be pretty boring) I ended up being able to set the first phrase of this week's anthem in the wordbuilder function. So you can hear a very rough approximation of the opening words sung by the software - Hail Son of God Savior of Men. The first part, Hail Son of God, is repeated in different ways across the different parts. I know I could have made the words sound better but at least they are almost all recognisable, if you also look at the words as they are sung.

It took a long time to set up the words in this first phrase. Each syllable needs to be typed individually - and repeated where the notes change on the same word. Once you have worked out a short phrase, this can be saved and reused on other voices but then has to be tweaked when the rhythm and the word lengths are different. I can see how the long-winded process produces good results but the time investment is huge. This is fine if you are creating a piece of choral music for a film or something but for my weekly workflow, I am going to have to practise and improve my speed. We shall see how I get on with that.

So I resorted to setting the rest of the anthem to a simple 'ah' sound. It's not too bad a sound overall.

I'm fairly pleased with the short anthem itself. The lyrics come from a different source to recent weeks. It's a prayer from Paradise Lost (at least I think so), a work by John Milton, the 17th Century English author.

Here are the words:

Hail Son of God, Savior of Men, thy Name

Shall be the copious matter of my Song

Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise

Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.