Anthem 52

Welcome to Anthem 23 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].

Technology is a fantastic thing, when it works. When it doesn’t it’s among the most frustrating things imaginable. This has been another highly frustrating week, due to technology.

The anthem writing didn’t go too badly and I ended up being fairly satisfied with what I produced for my 23rd attempt. The lyrics come from one of the week’s psalms again, this time Psalm l (50).

Here are the words:

The Lord, even the most mighty God, hath spoken :

and called the world, from the rising up of the sun, unto the going down thereof.

Out of Sion hath God appeared : in perfect beauty.

There are even fewer words than usual but plenty of opportunities for a bit of word painting.

Welcome to Anthem 22 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 hope you will notice a marked difference in the sound of the anthem this week. A strange confluence occured when I went looking for choir plugins that incorporated actual words, not just generic Ah or Oo sounds. Firstly, I found one almost immediately that looked great and secondly, it was on offer for 60% off! Thirdly, after some recent invoices of mine for audio editing work had been paid, I was in the position to just about afford the plugin. It's called Hollywood Choirs by EastWest Sounds. The name is, perhaps, slightly off-putting as I'm not sure the Hollywood blockbuster style of choir would necessarily fit my anthems too well but, in fact, the plugin has a huge range of moods and modes. It's highly configurable so there will inevitably be a steep learning curve for me, as they say, but, without doing any tweaks at all, the voices are much better than the previous choir plugins I have used.

However, the joy of the plugin is that you can indeed program it to sing words. It has a feature called 'wordbuilder' where you can type in words in English, phonetics or its own system called 'votox'. The choir has been recorded singing many hundreds of sounds and the software is pre-programmed to blend these together to make recognisable words. It even has the capability to sing in a range of European languages including Latin.

I haven't had time to work out exactly how to use the wordbuilder so I've had to just leave everything at the default settings, even the words it is using. So when you hear the anthem, it won't be singing the right words but I hope you agree with me that it already sounds a lot more natural than my previous Logic Pro efforts. Clearly, I am not saying it is as good as a real choir but I think it will help me a lot to hear what the anthems could sound like if sung by humans.

An interesting complication to using this new software is that I had to write the parts out in separate lines, not the compressed score approach I have been used to using. What I realised when listening back to the anthem yesterday is that this has resulted in more freedom in my writing, particularly between the soprano and alto parts. There is a lot more swapping of pitches in this anthem - by which I mean the altos sing higher than the sopranos at times, due to the shapes of the vocal lines. I think this is positive and I'm seriously considering always writing like this in future. An unexpected bonus has sprung out of the constrictions of using a new plugin!

As for the anthem itself, I chose another of the psalms set for this week, xlviii (98). I only ended up using the first couple of verses and the last one.

Here are the words:

Great is the Lord and highly to be praised :

in the city of our God, even upon his holy hill.

For this God is our God for ever and ever :

he shall be our guide unto death.

Welcome to Anthem 21 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's Pentecost this week so I looked for an ancient Pentecost prayer. A 1st Century one by Æthelwold is probably out of copyright so that fitted the bill.

Here are the words:

May God the Father bless us; may Christ take care of us; the Holy Ghost enlighten us all the days of our life. The Lord be our defender and keeper of body and soul, both now and for ever, to the ages of ages.

Welcome to Anthem 20 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 time, I went back to one of the psalms set for this week - Psalm xciii (93). I altered the order of some parts and combined a couple of lines to make the setting easier.

Here are the words:

The Lord is King,

The Lord has put on glorious apparel and girded himself with strength.

He hath made the round world sure : that it cannot be moved.

The floods are risen O Lord, the floods have lift up their voice : the floods lift up their waves.

The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly : but yet the Lord, who dwelleth on high, is mightier.

I felt that I needed to create something for my 20th anthem that showed some of the aspects of what I've learned so far. Having strong intentions hasn't necessarily resulted in them coming to fruition so for in this project but this time I'm pleased with the anthem that emerged.

Welcome to Anthem 19 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's Ascension Day this week. At Holy Trinity Church, the choir used to ascend the very dusty, cobwebby spiral staircase in the far South West corner after the Ascension morning service to sing on the roof of the Nave. I think it was the only time in the year that staircase was ever used except for maintenance I suppose. It goes without saying that I'm talking about an activity that ceased sometime in the 1980s when health and safety started being taken a little more seriously. The lead roof we strolled about on was sloped towards the precipice and it was surprising no choisters ever fell off. Nowadays, only the Vicar climbs up onto the roof - and it's the much lower - and safer - North Porch roof which is used. Still, it's fun to see and hear him up there.

To fit in with the occasion, I decided to write an anthem this week with an appropriate text, in Latin.

Here are the words:

Ascendit Deus in jubilatione, et Dominus in voce tubae. Dedit dona hominibus. Alleluia. Dominus in caelo paravit sedem suam. Alleluia.

Welcome to Anthem 18 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 anthem is based on another Psalm set for the week - this time Psalm cxlvii (147). I used some verses in full and others I missed parts out in order to create a useable set of words. As has happened more than once, I started off with the intention of making this anthem harmonically adventurous but then it turned itself into something more predictable. I do like it, though. Here are the words:

Great is our Lord and great is his power : yea and his wisdom is infinite.

The Lord setteth up the meek : and bringeth the ungodly down to the ground.

O sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving :

I also realised that the first 4 notes are identical to last week's opening notes in the soprano (treble) part. That's a bit weird but the anthems sound almost entirely dissimilar so I'm not that concerned about it!

I also ignored my own advice from last week on the length of anthems. This one is perhaps the shortest of all so far. It might be a good introit, perhaps. In its short span, there are a lot of notes, however. I got a little bit carried away with the quavers (quarter notes) in the 3/4 section, despite the relatively fast tempo and I think it creates an upbeat, positive character. In this case, I think that's a good thing. The words are clearly meant to be celebratory so the anthem buzzing away with fleet-footed runs seems appropriate.

I deliberately played with some sequences of 6ths to see how they work and, despite what I said earlier, some of the harmonies are a little unexpected, providing a frisson of interest, hopefully. I am finding A major a fun key to write in and this anthem doesn't really stray from that - partly due to its short span.

The construction is also simple - basically it's A B A B C - see if you can hear that as it wizzes past. Unfortunately, I have managed to make the Logic version very heavy and muffled in the bass so I'll have to try and fix that for next week's anthem.

Welcome to Anthem 17 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].

Everything has been much more positive this week. I have had a go at composing another 'Shakespeare Anthem', in the general tradition of fast, joyful pieces. Strangely, I can't remember exactly how I decided on using verses from Psalm cxlviii (148) but the theme of praise seems to have been a productive one.

O praise the Lord of heaven : praise him in the height.

Praise him, all ye angels of his : praise him, all his host.

Praise him, sun and moon : praise him, all ye stars and light.

Let them praise the Name of the Lord : for he spake the word, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.

Welcome to Anthem 16 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 a difficult week. There was a lot going on at work and as a result I was very tired which, as previously noted, makes composing rather difficult. Despite this, I did manage to write a complete anthem even though there were more than the usual number of stops and starts in the process. Several avenues were deleted and I'm not sure about how it ended up.

It's never a good idea to review things when you aren't feeling up to it and I shouldn't have looked back through the recordings of all my anthems so far last night, while I was in a low state due to tiredness. I left myself feeling that none of the pieces so far were of any worth and the expected progress hadn't happened. I'm in a bit of more positive mood today but I'm going to leave the older anthems alone for the moment and come back much later on to see how I think I have improved - or not improved...

Back to this week's anthem, however. I may have mentioned right back in the introduction to this podcast that April is a big month for Stratford-upon-Avon, where I live. Shakespeare's Birthday is on 23rd of the month and the traditional celebrations take place on the weekend closest to the date. As begun by students and staff almost 200 years ago, a procession starts from King Edward VI Grammar School (among former pupils are William Shakespeare, me and my son) and ends with the laying of flowers at Shakespeare's grave in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church (where my daughter and I are members of the choir and my wife and son are former members). When I first arrived in Stratford in 1977, representatives of a large number of countries attended to unfurl their national flags on flagpoles around the centre of the town and it was a grand affair. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) the political difficulties and the cost of inviting ambassadors and others has become prohibitive. The festivities are still great fun and remarkable for somewhere as small as Stratford. Several aspects of the celebrations remain the same including the Shakespeare Service at Holy Trinity Church and its Shakespeare Sermon, usually given by a clergy person with an interest in or a connection to Shakespeare studies and sometimes by an academic like my late father who was Professor of English at Warwick University and a member of the Holy Trinity congregation.

An innovation for that service began a relatively short time after I joined the choir in 1979 - the (almost) annual commissioning of the appropriately-named Shakespeare Anthem. This is one of the activities undertaken by The Friends of the Music of Holy Trinity Church and has featured several famous composers over the decades including Andrew Fletcher, Arthur Wills, Guy Woolfenden, John Joubert, Francis Jackson, Philip Stopford and many others. This year, the anthem is by a female composer for the first time - Becky McGlade. No spoilers but I'm very much enjoying rehearsing her anthem and you can find out all about her on her website.

With this time of year in Stratford whirling around my head, I decided to have a go at a Shakespeare Anthem of my own. I'll probably try another one next week as well. I didn't use an actual passage from Shakespeare, mainly because I couldn't find one, but during my web search, I chanced upon the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust collections website. The Trust has looked after Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford for many years as well as some other houses that belonged to his extended family. I worked at a house called Hall's Croft when I was a student and my wife worked at the world famous Anne Hathaway's Cottage. The Trust also looks after a wonderful collection of items connected to Shakespeare including a book of prayers.

While it isn't a copy definitely used by William Shakespeare, it was published during his lifetime and is exactly the kind of prayer book that might have been in his library. So the prayer depicted above seemed like a good choice to set. Who knows, perhaps it was read aloud by William or one of his family?

I took a little editorial licence with the old English spellings of the words in order to make it work in an anthem but it's mostly the same:

I do commende and betake my life both body and soule, now and for ever.

Unto thee, with the father and the holy Ghost, one God of most excellent majestie, be all prayre, honor, and thankesgiving, for ever and ever. Amen.

There are only 2 sentences and a final amen but that wasn't my problem. It just didn't seem to flow. I ended up adding dots to quite a few of the notes because I thought that one of the issues was that the rhythm was very straight. I also went back and made the bass part lower in several places. Listening back today, I think the anthem is a little bit more attractive than I was expecting and, again, I'm wondering how much this had to do with my overall mood.

Anyway, it starts in F major and switches to G major shortly afterwards. Later it makes its way back to F major and I went for contrast in movement rather than key signature or feel in a central section that features a lot of quavers (8th notes). The texture here is much more complex and I think it does shift the anthem to a different gear. The end returns to something more like the original feel with a very loud and positive ending. I completely forgot to add an amen section but never mind.

You might be able to hear some of the aspects I tried to fix during the week but you may not.

Welcome to Anthem 15 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 returned to the Church of England Lectionary and one of the psalms set for this week - xxvi or 26, depending on your preference. Here are the lyrics:

Be thou my Judge, O Lord, for I have walked innocently:

my trust hath been also in the Lord, therefore shall I not fall.

Examine me, O Lord, and prove me:

try out my reins and my heart.

For thy loving-kindness is ever before mine eyes:

and I will walk in thy truth.

Once again, I found that fewer words makes for a more manageable writing process. I also used a semi-random technique for the first time. I set the first line of the Psalm 'Be thou my Judge O Lord' by placing the notes on the stave without listening to them being played by the software at the same time. I knew I wanted another pseudo-canon entry approach for the start of the vocal parts so I sketched out what I thought it would look like. Then I listened to how it actually sounded and tweaked it until it sounded as good as it looked. It worked rather well and I converted it into an organ introduction with some nice offbeat movement.

Welcome to Anthem 14 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 time, I continued with another Easter anthem with text from another anonymous Easter prayer:

May the glad dawn Of Easter morn Bring joy to thee. May the calm eve Of Easter leave A peace divine with thee. May Easter night On thine heart write, O Christ, I live for thee!

These could have been good words for a big, loud anthem but instead what came out was rather subdued. Beginning an anthem is an odd experience. I tend to start at the beginning of the words and work forward, just seeing what crops up, rather than having a definite plan. This may change but it seems to be working at the moment.