Antiphon for Friday, 1st week of Advent
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    There have been several posts lately about the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly concerning Vespers and Advent. We will be celebrating Evening Prayer during our Advent reconciliation service on Friday, Dec. 5th. Like many other music directors, I find myself without suitable settings of the antiphons in the vernacular. Here is my attempt at the Magnificat antiphon. I am not a composer, so I just tried to imagine what Theodore Marier might have written. In fact, the antiphon is designed to be used with his Tone 8 setting of the canticle. Your comments are most welcomed.
  • OlbashOlbash
    Posts: 314
    Nice work, brother incantu.

    This seems pretty much consistent with the Marier style, with the following exceptions:

    1. You wrote one pitch per syllable (with the exception of "peo-"). I think the style might call for one or two more of the syllables to be broken into two or more pitches (e.g., "called" could be B - C# ?)

    2. The back-to-back P4's on "save his peo-" is not idiomatic. Try making "his" an F#.

    3. The successive parallel fifths in the bass line of the first system doesn't quite fit the idiom, unless you're trying to get a "voice of God" effect or something. Not only are the parallel 5ths ill-advised for the usual reasons, but they also result in 7 chords on every pulse ("E-," "I," "called," "Son"), something you wouldn't have heard in Marier's style, especially not at the end of the phrase ("Son")
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    I guess I meant "what Marier would have written if he were me. But I was concerned about the same three things you mentioned. I tried working with a new melody (below) but in the end decided to change mostly the harmonization instead.
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    Here's the first psalm.
  • Bruce E. Ford
    Posts: 429
    You have solved your problem and will do well to stick with your solution. I would like to point out, however, that the first draft of your melody follows the outline of the Gregorian type-melody used for the antiphon "Ex Aegypto." This type-melody, used widely in Advent (but at other times as well) is very flexible, and your English text can be set to it with no effort at all.
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