Welcome to Anthem 36 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 is the first anthem I have written away from home. We were on holiday in Devon this past week but Anthem 52 waits for no man – or woman or whatever. For my 30th Wedding Anniversary holiday I managed to write anthems to plug the gap before I went but that wasn’t possible this time. I knew I could take my laptop on this holiday and there would be some ‘down time’ so it was an interesting task to try. I regret not remembering to take my ‘over-ear’ headphones because using earbuds wasn’t a lot of fun. It made the writing more difficult.
However, I did manage to find some reasonable words, again a prayer from a service rather than a Psalm, like the previous anthem. Commonly known as the ‘General Confession’, it’s a prayer familiar to millions of Christians around the world, I’m sure. Despite this, or perhaps due to this, I found it a worthwhile set of lyrics for anthem 36.
Words for Anthem 36:
Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,
We have offended against thy holy laws,
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done,
And there is no health in us:
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders;
Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults,
Restore thou them that are penitent,
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
To the glory of thy holy Name.
Amen.
If you are familiar with this confession, you may have noticed that I left one line out: “According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord:”. The flow of the anthem didn’t seem to be suitable for including this line. I was also keen to get the anthem finished, to be honest. Maybe it was truthfully a bit of both.
Back to the beginning. In this unaccompanied anthem, there needed to be a sense of confession, obviously, due to the text. So the beginning is quiet and contemplative, moving at a slow pace. I stayed away from block chords to give a feeling of motion, despite the overall theme and moving from C major/A minor(ish) to C minor(ish) after only 10 bars sounds quite effective to me. So I decided to double down and change the key again 4 bars later – to E minor.
This section is all about doing what we shouldn’t and not doing what we should so I restricted the range of notes to see if it would help to convey the words. Altos and sopranos have a duet and then tenors and basses. Finally in the section all four parts declare, ” … and there is no health in us.”
The music comes to a complete stop and then things really kick off. The tempo is raised and the time signature changes from 3/4 to 7/8. I think this is the first time I have composed in an unusual time signature but it was enjoyable. I threw in a bar or two of 2/4 here and there to facilitate some of the text but the fast feel combined with a shift to D major is a great contrast to the first, sombre section.
There are words to be taken care of like “miserable offenders” and I made these a more dreary tonality but generally the music nips along often using a couple of block chords that alternate. There is also lots of movement in thirds to add to the fun and eventually the Amen section is simple but effective.
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 16 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
