Welcome to Anthem 44 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.
It was time for an unaccompanied anthem this week – in fact another Christmas Carol. You won’t be surprised to hear that the words come from Isaac Watts yet again. It’s a lullaby sung by a mother, recalling the infant Jesus and Mary. From my experience of singing many carols, I think it’s a little unusual. However, it’s rather effective, in my opinion.
Here are the words I chose:
Words for Anthem 44:
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed,
Heav’nly blessings without number,
Gently falling on thy head.
How much better thou’rt attended,
Than the Son of God could be,
When from Heaven He descended,
And became a child like thee!Soft and easy is thy cradle,
Coarse and hard thy Savior lay:
When His birthplace was a stable,
And His softest bed was hay.
Oh, to tell the wondrous story,
How His foes abused their king;
How they killed the Lord of glory,
Makes me angry while I sing.Hush, my child, I did not chide thee,
Though my song may seem so hard;
’Tis thy mother sits beside thee,
And her arms shall be thy guard.
May’st thou learn to know and fear Him,
Love and serve Him all thy days;
Then to dwell forever near Him,
Tell His love and sing His praise.
The writing process went rather well, once I had decided on an approach. I began by creating a ‘rocking’ type accompaniment in 3/4 in the altos, tenors and basses. The bass part is an almost continuous pedal note while the parts above phase in and out in an attractive but unpredictable manner.
I found that having a 5-bar introduction before the soprano entry worked better than a 6-bar one, which was a surprise. I’ve not been able to hear exactly what the repeated ‘hush’ sounds like but I think it will produce an interesting texture beneath the soprano tune.
It’s always a challenge to construct carols that sound sufficiently varied because of the strict verse structure. The first verse changes to an A in the bass line after the first 2 lines and the harmony parts change as well. I think this provides some good contrast to the opening.
There is some word painting in a descending melody line for ‘When from Heaven He descended’ and the counter-melodic harmonies work well here – some of the interweaving is randomly produced by the ostinato inner parts but I did a lot of tweaking to make it work.
The second verse has the same structure as the opening of the anthem but it has been away for long enough to make the return enjoyable rather than predictable, I think.
Half way through this verse I did feel it was time to make some changes. It was time to give the basses something more interesting to do so I gave them the melody.
There is more variation in the final verse. I stripped down the texture to leave just the melody and a two-note, held harmony. This is shifted around the parts so that the melody is shared in the pattern – soprano, tenor, alto and finally bass.
The final half of the last verse returns to the opening scheme with sopranos having the tune and then the final 5 bars contain a version of the accompaniment alone that slows down and ends on a held chord with a high soprano note on top.
The other very positive aspect to this week was that I finally have some better news on the sound of the resulting digital music file. For years now, I have known that Musescore has an online community aspect to it that incudes free downloads of sounds and voices for playing back your scores. What I didn’t realise is that not only has the main software been dramatically re-written and updated, so has the online platform. It now has an up-to-date look and feel and offers both free and low(ish) cost voices.
The one that caught my attention, as you might imagine, was called VOXOS Epic Choirs. It’s from a company called Cinesamples and the full version is very expensive. However, they have created a version specifically to work with Musescore at a comparatively very reasonable price. It has few of the advanced features of the full product but it does include the original choir voices. That means it is simple to play back your scores using these high-quality sounds.
Here is the blurb on the website – “VOXOS contains world-renowned choirs and soloists with over 15 years of experience recording for countless Hollywood films, trailers, video games and the concert stage. Recorded at the legendary Bastyr Chapel, with its gorgeous acoustics, VOXOS Epic Choir lifts your music up to the next level.”
The plugin also has some kind of lyric support but I have yet to try that out. I was delighted, however, that the overall effect of the VOXOS choir singing Anthem 44 is far better than anything I have yet managed to produce. Clearly, it’s not as good as a real choir but it’s a significant improvement on what I could do previously – at least for this kind of anthem. I’m not sure it will be ideal for louder or other types of anthems but we will see. It was also very easy to change the default sounds in Musescore to the new voices.
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 8 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
