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 show@anthem52.com.
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:
Words for Anthem 32:
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.
I began the anthem with a unison note but layered in turn between all the parts. This quickly dissolves into an interesting chord and then the tenors take over the lead role for a few bars. It’s in 2/4 for no particular reason but that seems to work OK.
It starts in C major with a few aspects of A minor here and there but then I add in more sharps towards a definite change to A major for the ‘we may give thanks’ section. Obvious but effective.
I like the texture which has a bit of a flow between parts and there are few straight, chordal passages – and those that do crop up are definitely for effect.
Once a point of stasis is reached after ‘make our boast of thy praise’, I return to C major/A minor but with lots of F and C sharps that creep in. This section is based on the opening music but altered to fit the new words beginning ‘blessed be the Lord God’. I like the key ambiguity throughout the anthem and I decided to see what a repeating bass part would do at this point, combined with an offbeat tenor part. The result? Quite pleasing I think.
The unison A natural section leads to a short Amen passage and it turned out to be another fairly short anthem but I’m glad I got through it in the end despite a slow start.
As usual, there’s no sign of Logic Pro advances yet – sorry.
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 – and a new anthem – only 20 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
