Welcome to Anthem 47 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.
I went back to Advent this week – or at least I looked for some more Advent lyrics. It occurred to me that I could find some lyrics in service booklets for Advent Carol Services so I tried to search for those. The second one I found was from The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester’s 2020 Advent Carol Service. They performed a carol with words by John Audelay (d. c. 1426). These seemed ideal for what I was trying to write.
Here are the words I chose:
Words for Anthem 47:
There is a flow’r sprung of a tree, the root thereof is called Jesse, a flow’r of price there is none such in paradise.
This flow’r is fair and fresh of hue,
it fadeth ne’er, but e’er is new;
the blessèd branch this flow’r on grew
was Mary mild that bare Jesu;
a flow’r of grace;
against all sorrow it is solace.When Gabriel this maid did meet,
with ‘Ave Maria’ he did her greet;
between them two this flow’r was set
and safe was kept, no man should wit,
till on a day
in Bethlehem it could spread and spray.
I liked the old English which has not been updated and I chose the refrain (the part in italics above) and 2 of the 3 verses.
Rather than making the refrain full choir and full organ, I decided to have it sung just by a duet between sopranos and altos. I did use the refrain as a recurring element even though it’s not clear if the version from the Carol Service did that.
I tried to create something a bit quirky for this anthem so the 2-part harmony of the refrain is not quite as one might expect. There aren’t any parallel 5ths or anything like that (or at least I haven’t spotted any) but there is a little bit of a modal feel, I think, in some of the relationships between the 2 parts.
The feel is quite minimalist and I decided to maintain this throughout the anthem, with a sparse organ part, for example. In fact, the organ only plays for about half the time or perhaps even less than that. I felt the topic of Mary being compared to a flower worked well in a simple and quiet form. You can see the sparseness easily in the score due to the number of rests across all parts!
When the organ does play, it’s mainly held, slow-moving chords and a little bit of a bass pattern occasionally.
The words of the verses have a slightly odd metre and when and if I review this anthem I might make the first verse a bit longer because at the moment it feels a little unsettling due to the 3-ish sections. When I re-listen, however, it might come over as interesting and unusual. I’ll have to see.
In the first verse, the music is repeated in the pattern – tenors, basses, sopranos and finally altos with the basses and tenors finishing off the verse in its unusual length.
The refrain is repeated next, followed by the second verse with the organ part rearranged for a bit of variety. At one point the held chords are taken over by the sopranos and altos and the final words, ‘in Bethlehem it could spread and spray’, are sung in unison by the whole choir followed by 4-part harmony.
The refrain comes back for the final time in a slightly elongated version to conclude the anthem.
I’m pleased with how this anthem turned out. The ‘less is more’ approach seems to have worked well, as does the slightly unusual harmonic choices.
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 5 to go – but until then the question remains – will I make it to Anthem 52?
