Who wrote this amen
  • JesJes
    Posts: 576
    Who wrote this amen.
    https://youtu.be/ADA3pNLLg5w
    From A Festival Of Lessons and Carols choir of king's college Cambridge 1954 recording "prayer and amen"
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    I can't recall just whose it is right now, but it is an 'amen' from one of the Tudor or Jacobean composer's sets of Preces and Responses.

    If it doesn't come to us whose it is, you might choose a similar one from a set of P&Rs that you may have at hand.
    Thanked by 1Jes
  • Chaswjd
    Posts: 269
    This one may be similar:

    http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/1/11/Ws-pra-amen.pdf
    Thanked by 1Jes
  • CGM
    Posts: 699
    My suspicion is that it's a more recent piece (perhaps composed for the service?) mimicking that older style. Transcription attached.
    KingsChoir_AMEN.pdf
    89K
    Thanked by 6PaxTecum M. Jackson Osborn donr CHGiffen Salieri Jes
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Good work, CGM!
    It looks like you have nailed it!
    Thanked by 1Jes
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    That's from the Preces and Responses by William Smith of Durham: contemporary of Orlando Gibbons.

    Ord did write a setting of the Responses, but it remains in unpublished MS in the archives of King's. (Adam Lay ybounden is his only published composition.)
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen Jes
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSCnBupEv1s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxrXdCulD_c

    Score at CPDL
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen Jes
  • CGM
    Posts: 699
    I stand corrected. (But they did sing it in A, and not A-flat...)
    SMITH_Amen.pdf
    89K
    Thanked by 1Jes
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    CGM and Salieri seem to have advanced the same music, only with an honest mis-attribution on CGM's part.

    William Smith of Durham, a relatively minor figure. We fail to realise the incredible musical fecundity of sacred music of those times, and, of course, with the English cathedral tradition it goes on right now. How many American cathedrals, Catholic or Anglican, can boast composers of such compositional merit on their staffs? What we boast that we have gained in technology we have lost in simple human talent and the value that we place on it.
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    I am very impressed with CGM's transcription. That this is in five parts with divided altos is strange enough: but that the two altos and the tenor consistently cross each other, makes it quite difficult to weed out the individual parts. The transcription is quite good.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn Jes
  • CGM
    Posts: 699
    Thanks, Salieri. I thought that it was in five voices, but with the similar timbres of tenors and countertenors, it was difficult to tell who was doing what, which is why I ended up with divisi in both the tenor and alto lines.

    Also, in some minor respects I think that my transcription is more accurate in regards to what the choir actually sang in the recording (which is to say that I think they might have modified Smith's writing in small ways): I really don't hear the "-men" of the amens in m.2, and I'm almost certain that the sopranos do hold over a B into the second beat of the third measure (unless that's just a really long and present reverb, which is also possible, I guess).

    I like doing transcriptions. I hope that they keep my ears and brain sharp.
    Thanked by 1Jes
  • JesJes
    Posts: 576
    @CGM Hugh and I have both had a crack at transcribing this too!
    Thanks. This is handy in our comparisons too!
    We have adapted for four singers with no divisi etc. But I could tell there was more!!! YAY!
    THANK YOU!
  • JesJes
    Posts: 576
    We also did it in G instead.
  • JesJes
    Posts: 576
    Seriously you guys are amazing thank you so much!
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