Welcome to Anthem 11 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 show@anthem52.com.
This week’s composition seemed to go a lot more smoothly than usual. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. As it was Mothering Sunday this week, I hunted for a prayer to set. I didn’t want to go for the traditional Ave Maria because I dislike the Schubert version and I wouldn’t be able to separate the words from that music. Nothing personal, it’s just not a tune that suits me.
I found a useful website and a variety of good prayer words here – https://www.prayinglatin.com/prayers-to-our-lady/ – and went for part of Regina Caeli, Queen of Heaven. Here’s the part I set:
Words for Anthem 11:
Deus qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum laetificare dignatus es: praesta, quaesumus, ut per eius Genetricem Virginem Mariam, perpetuae capiamus gaudia vitae. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum.
Amen.
______________
O God, who by the Resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, granted joy to the whole world: grant we beseech Thee, that through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, His Mother, we may lay hold of the joys of eternal life. Through the same Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.
Translation https://www.prayinglatin.com/prayers-to-our-lady/
It was time to try out organ accompaniment again and I threw in some of my favourite ascending triplets, for fun, as well as an accidental in the bass pedal part to save myself from too obvious a cadence in the introduction.
I was pleased with the way I managed to alternate the choir and organ part, sometimes accompanying with just bass notes, sometimes with bass pedals and manual bass part, other times full organ and sometimes with a combination of approaches. A short middle passage is a little slower and has a little bit of a relative minor feel and the ending amen was fun to write, concluding with huge choir and organ chords.
I even found myself humming some of the hooks and themes around the house this week, so all was going well…until I tried to create a version of the anthem in Logic Pro – again! I became very dispirited and wondered if the whole project was worth continuing with if I couldn’t ever get a version of the music that sounds acceptable. I wasted a lot of time trying to tweak the settings of the choir and organ plugins but it was becoming steadily worse.
Fortunately, once I had left it and come back the next day with ‘fresh ears’, I managed to work out what the problem was. There was a reverb plugin I must have set up for another anthem previously that was interfering with all the settings I was tweaking in the choir and organ plugins. No wonder I couldn’t work out what was going wrong! After removing that plugin, the changes I made to the others could actually be heard properly and I managed to create something which works – for now – ish. Hopefully, I will now be able to make significant progress towards a decent sounding way of listening to the anthems as I go through the year.
At the moment, the choir sounds synthetic but at least I can hear what the notes are supposed to be, without being drowned out by reverb. Anyway, see what you think.
Well, what do you think? Let me know on X.com @realanthem52, Instagram @realanthem52, as a comment below or via email show@anthem52.com
I hope you will join me next week for a new episode (perhaps featuring my second interview) – and a new anthem – only 41 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
