Welcome to Anthem 40 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 was Harvest Festival at our sister Church, All Saints, Luddington.
It was great to take quite a large choir from Holy Trinity and we sang ‘The Heavens are Telling’ by Haydn from his oratorio, ‘The Creation’. There are a couple of trio sections and I drew the short straw in my tenor capacity. It went rather well.
In other news, I’ve made it to Anthem 40 which feels like another milestone. I’ve also been thinking about the next stages in my process after the completion of Anthem 52. I am sure that not all the anthems I’ve written are worthy of compiling into some kind of collection. That isn’t to say they haven’t been worthwhile to compose. Every time I have completed an anthem I have learned something, including a lot of ‘what not to do’ revelations!
Following the process of some award programmes, I think I’m going to listen to all the anthems and create a ‘longlist’ of those I deem to be worth revisiting and adding to a collection. Then I will ask friends, family and you to help me narrow the longlist down to a ‘shortlist’. A final pass will result in approximately 10 anthems that I will refine and polish up for publication. I can already think of 5 or 6 I expect to be in this final list but I’m bound to be surprised!
Back to this week’s anthem, however. Once again I chose some words from my current favourite source – Isaac Watts. These ones were fairly ‘visual’ and the theme of lifting up ones eyes seemed like an obvious choice for setting as an anthem.
Here are the words I chose:
Words for Anthem 40:
Upward I lift mine eyes,
From God is all my aid;
The God that built the skies,
And earth and nature made;
God is the tower to which I fly;
His grace is nigh in every hour.My feet shall never slide
And fall in fatal snares,
Since God, my guard and guide,
Defends me from my fears.I’ll go and come, nor fear to die,
Till from on high Thou call me home.
I chopped the verses up extensively this time to create a sensible length of text. So I was left with the whole of the first verse, 4 lines out of 6 of the second verse and the last 2 lines of the fourth verse. It seemed to work out okay.
This is probably the most adventurous anthem so far in terms of its tonality. There’s quite a bit of dissonance in it and the key shifts fairly dramatically from C major(ish) to E major(ish). I like the effect of these changes which do jolt the senses a bit at times.
The opening phrase employs the rather obvious but still effective upwards motion across all parts and ends with a surprising cadence. This is repeated with some differences.
The next section has lots of echoing between parts to make a fairly complex texture. “And earth and nature made;” is one of those unusually dissonant points I referred to a moment ago. I like the overall effect.
There are repeats of the opening material and the echoing until the word ‘slide’. I decided to give this a chromatic, sliding, elongated feel. Again, it gets quite dissonant but will certainly startle any slumbering listeners out of their stupor.
The ending returns to the opening material (once again) and there’s a final much slower passage to conclude the anthem with a crunchy chord.
I’m pleased with this anthem because it feels like it doesn’t make any concessions to ‘safe’ music. Not all my anthems are like this and that’s a good thing – but this one makes a good contrast.
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 12 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
2 responses to “Anthem 40 – Upward I lift my eyes”
Hi Kevin –
Obviously I haven’t checked in for some time – my apologies for this.
🙁
But having taken a listen to anthem 40, I would just like to salute you! You’ve accomplished a quite contemporary idiom of inventive harmonic vocabulary and progressions plus convincing counterpoint. I found #40 most satisfying. The many meter changes happen especially at the ends of phrases and don’t seem forced – this element fits nicely with your prog credentials, so to speak. But so do the harmonies and the counterpoint, in my view.
You seem to be having success in using this project to hone your “craft of musical composition,” as Hindemith would call it. I listened to this one 3X through.
Well done!
All the best,
Greg
No need for apologies! Thank you very much for the comment. I’m delighted you enjoyed Anthem 40 and that you can hear some improvement since I began this venture. I very much hope I can have some anthems performed next year. Just beginning to sort out how to make that happen. Thanks again for your support!