Have any of you been using the freeze on congregational singing to sing the 'Responsorial' in directum? I'm so tired of Guimont that I spent time today to lay out some double chants.
Very ;nice! I would quibble with some of your pointing, but am happy to see you doing it. By the way, I don't think, I may be corrected, but I don't think that 'the psalm' must be sung responsorily. It may as well be sung antiphonally or, as here, in diectum. We sing it in directum with Anglican chant every week at Walsingham - except when we have the Palmer-Burgess gradual.
And here is another idea - If you a required to sing the psalm responsorialy make up a simple melody for the congregation's responsory and have the choir sing the verses to Anglican chant.
Feel free; who doesn't love a good pointing quibble?
A project I have on pause at the moment is to finish Responds that can be sung a cappella with the congregation for Advent, somewhat along the lines of one for OT 17C. Here's OT 19 B:
There's something to be said for teaching pointing to singers: I can see what you're going for with "his strength / and the | wonders|" but my choir would waver at the second hyphen in gene-ra-tion.
My "blessëd" for "blessèd" isn't strictly kosher; the dieresis should be reserved for one syllable to two notes.
we will declare to the | gene- |ration · to | come: *
would be more conventional than what I came up with above.
On the Assumption one: vs. 2, I would change on "Rev" of reverance, giving a melisma to that particular syllable. It's not particularly idiomatic in Anglican chant to make a note change on a conjunction. In vs. 3, I'd keep "in" of "into" on the reciting chord, then shift everything over so that "king" is a melisma. Finally, you could make a case on "-out" of without being over the two cadential notes in the penultimate "measure".
I love seeing the different solutions people make for these. Things were very wooden in the old days, but the work of the past 75 years has brought a lot more naturalness of speech, etc., in these.
The one time in a year that my crew has to do a RP is when we close out the parish 40 Hours. For awhile, we've been doing the psalm to a falsobordone. But we're still short of people for 4 parts, and English doesn't sit well in psalmtones...which is why Anglican chant developed to begin with. So we're going the AC route this year, and we'll see how it's received.
I was surprised Sunday before last by how very easily my choir mastered the "Since by man came death" chant, given the difficulty last time we did Messiah Part Three. Hypotheses are 1) my explanation of enharmonic and diatonic semitones has had time to sink in; 2) the psalm text encourages horizontal thinking over belabored vertical tuning; 3) a tone lower ;-)
In practice is the refrain sung in parts by the choir? Including IC, which has three parts?
iC, 3. Line 2, I wonder if "For those who | keep his | cove- . nant^and | law" might be better, avoiding the rather strong accent on the weak syllable "-nant" ?
II C , V2 should there be a bar line "we are | glad in-"? And V4, line 2, "the | seëd" ?
Thanks! In 2019 I was thinking the organ should be silent, except for something outrageously elaborate on Gaudete; for "To you, O Lord" (a nod to A. Scarlatti) the 3-part voice leading seemed simplest.
"| cove- . nant^and | law": I wonder too, and my pointing style might continue to evolve in the future ;-)
Thanks for the good catches on "| glad" and "| seëd"! I had forgotten we had to fix those in rehearsal very recently (OT29B). Like the Xrex-Advent 1a "I rejoiced", it might be a sign that the Lectionary creators weren't really thinking cyclically.
The Advent I C tune was at one point 'attributed to Thomas Morley, but more probably by William Morley'. The latter gets a withering notice in Grove's Dictionary, apparently originally penned by Watkins Shaw: "He is remembered because of the faint interest attaching to his putative authorship of an early instance of the Anglican double chant."
my comment, as a fellow composer, is that the refrain from Isaiah for Advent III is one of the most AWKWARD texts I've ever had to set. It is long, and the phrases are very lopsided relative to the other.
Isn't it though! My first thought was to elide "gladness, for a-" which would be better. I judged it risky, given a local tradition of a frisky tempo for "O come divine Messiah".
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