Welcome to Anthem 1 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.
Happy New Year to you and yours. These episodes will undoubtedly change and develop significantly during 2024 and I’m not sure exactly what the best way to structure them is but let me know if you have any suggestions.
The experience of writing the first anthem has, unsurprisingly, been both positive and negative. The general topic for the week was pretty obvious as the year turned and here are the lyrics:
Words for Anthem 1:
The old year now away is fled, the new year it is entered,
Then let us now our sins downtread, and joyfully all appear;
Let’s merry be this holiday, and let us run with sport and play,
Hang sorrow, let’s cast care away — God send us a Happy New Year.And now with new year’s gifts, each friend unto each other they do send;
God grant we may our lives amend, so that the truth may appear.
Now like the snake cast off your skin of evil thoughts and wicked sin,
And to amend this new year begin — God send us a Happy New Year.
Anthem 1 – God send us a Happy New Year:
I hope you will join me next week for a new episode – and a new anthem – only 51 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
4 responses to “Anthem 1 – God send us a Happy New Year”
I know nothing about composition, and haven’t sung in a choir for many years, but I am looking forward to following your creative endeavour. I’ll be cheering for you when you reach #52
Thank you, Jamie! Great to know you will be following along – and cheering – assuming I reach Anthem 52…
Congratulations Kevin. Sounds great. I’m glad to see you are actively pursuing your own music. It’s what keeps us young! I like hearing new carol music because I’m usually bored with the traditional songs you hear every year. Since you linked a recording of another carol, I would like to recommend one of my favorites: To Drive The Cold Winter Away by Loreena McKennitt (1987). You can see it on Spotify. I like it; my wife finds it too melancholy.
Thank you Guy. Very kind of you. I will look for that carol. It’s great to see more female composers gaining recognition!