Salve Regina, SATB div
  • LDG
    Posts: 5
    Here's a rough draft of a piece I've been working on. Thoughts? Constructive criticism?
    Salve Regina (Sherwood).pdf
    53K
  • LDG
    Posts: 5
    Midi attached here.
    Salve Regina.mid
    5K
  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    Is this meant to sound so dissonant?
    Thanked by 1LDG
  • LDG
    Posts: 5
    To a degree. I find the timbre of human voices does a great deal to soften dissonances, so it would sound rather different sung than synthesized. I wouldn't play it on the organ with anything but the simplest registrations, and perhaps not even then. On a piano, the dissonance would be far more abrasive. It makes frequent use of maj 7th harmonies and chords with added fourths (the latter being a major part of Eric Whitacre's harmonic language, whose work I admire).
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    LDG,

    Do you have Russian basses? Especially at the end, you have a tremendous number of low notes.


    Also, in reference to your plea for dissonances, I should note that Durufle and Laurisden use dissonance to considerable effect, but that dissonance isn't valuable as an end in itself.
    Thanked by 1LDG
  • LDG
    Posts: 5
    Oh, thanks for the reminder about the low notes! I'm considering transposing the whole thing up a step or so, and will in any case provide alternate voicings for two of the lowest chords. (The basses will need to manage a low "mi" for whatever key it gets sung in.)

    And, yes, I agree that dissonance -- like all other harmonic tools -- is not an end in itself. (I hope I haven't treated it that way here.) The kind of work by Lauridsen and Durufle you mention would sound rather wonky on, say, a piano. Sung, though, the effect is quite different. By my earlier point I meant to suggest that when speaking of degrees of dissonance, timbre is not an incidental consideration.
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