Help needed! Can you compose music? How about a short Alleluia?
  • Paul_OnnonhoaratonPaul_Onnonhoaraton
    Posts: 434
    We have a website where composers submit free settings of the Gospel Acclamation. So far, we've added about 2,000 scores. These items are high in demand. Individual scores have been downloaded as many as 800 times!

    Would you be interesting in composing any? Here are the "terms" required:

    1. Verses must be fully written out (notated) for each feast. [see the website if you don't know what I mean.]

    2. Organ accompaniment is required.

    3. Submissions must be sent in PDF and a "congregational insert" is highly recommended.

    4. You have to agree that once they are posted, they can remain forever. [Otherwise I would have pay somebody to take them down, and we don't have funds for that.]

    5. Once your Alleluia has been "accepted" you have to promise you will compose at least twenty (20) feasts [i.e. verses] — a total of twenty (20) scores — otherwise it's not really good for the musicians who use the site. There are actually about 176 gospel acclamation texts for Sundays (all three liturgical years) — feel free to complete them all. That would be incredibly useful to Church musicians.

    6. If we don't feel your submission is right for our site, please don't get hurt feelings. Just say, "Your loss, buddy" and move on. And don't hate us.

    7. The verse must be written in free rhythm (chant rhythm). The "Alleluia" can be chant OR metrical. Nice, simple, metrical "Alleluias" are useful and much appreciated. Do you know what I mean when I say a "circle of fifths" Alleluia? These are perfect! [And they can be descending fifths ... or better yet, ascending fifths, like they did in the Renaissance!]

    8. Submit your score using the "Contact us" on our website.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    1. Verses must be fully written out (notated) for each feast.

    7. The verse must be written in free rhythm (chant rhythm). The "Alleluia" can be chant OR metrical. Nice, simple, metrical "Alleluias" are useful and much appreciated.
    Are we to presume that Anglican chant verses (which traditionally are not written out) are to be excluded from consideration? In particular, what about something like the attached setting, for the feast of All Souls, using the alternative text, no. 5, in the list on your site (which, by the way wrongly gives the date as November 1st, instead of the correct November 2nd).

    Edit: I have replaced this Alleluia with one that has a slightly different (and improved) pointing of the final cadence for the Versicle. Many thanks to Bruce E. Ford for suggesting this improvement.
    Giffen-Alleluia in C with verse.pdf
    64K
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Or this setting, with the verses for the Sundays of Advent and for Immaculate Conception?
    Giffen-Advent Alleluias-ICEL.pdf
    67K
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Sincere question-
    Why is organ a companiment required if one is composing plainsong?
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Sincere question-
    Why is organ a companiment required if one is composing plainsong?


    I thought the same thing. The chant-based Psalm settings I composed/adapted for daily Mass (mostly Thursdays if anybody's interested) this past year at my academic institution were all done unaccompanied. I would have been happy to compose accompaniment, but I thought it worked better (and was better for my students) to go without.

    However, I imagine for typical Sunday parish life a large majority of users would choose an accompanied setting over an unaccompanied one.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen mrcopper
  • Carl DCarl D
    Posts: 992
    I had the same question. All the things I've submitted in the past have been unaccompanied, because my composition skills ended there. When I've looked through Chabanel Psalms or Garnier Alleluias, I was always looking for acapella first.

    Jeff, are you intentionally wanting to limit this aspect? I can respect your decision, of course, but there ARE people out here not needing accompaniment.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Paul_OnnonhoaratonPaul_Onnonhoaraton
    Posts: 434
    CHGiffen, I think your versions are lovely and hope you will submit them. Your versions seem more appropriate to be sung by an SATB choir than indiv. cantor in my view.

    Regarding accompaniments, from the feedback we have received, it seems folks really appreciate the option to accompany with organ.

    I think it has been pretty well established on this forum that chant accompanied with organ is the original and most authentic way to sing plainsong. It was how these melodies were originally conceived: to be sung with NOH-style accompaniment.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    I wonder how many people, even after reading this post, will argue with the above.
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Jeff, I totally respect your decision to ask that submissions have optional accompaniments. It's your decision; I simply find it contrary to my experience.

    The choir I direct has over a dozen cantors (mostly teens) who regularly chant the Gregorian Alleluias. The idea that simple Alleluias always need to have accompaniment defies what I've seen in parishes (mode vi alleluia, anyone?).

    Re your assertion about plainsong, I wonder how experts like Prof. Mahrt would respond...

    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    Here we go.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Where's the instruction for purple text again?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,824
    lol
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Doh, Adam! Well, if there was sarcasm or parody intended, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker!
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    I am generally grateful to have accompaniments available in the event I choose to use them. Granted, some of our Neo-Calvinist Catholics reject 1,000 or so years of accompanied chant practice in their efforts to make the liturgy more "pure" and more to their own liking. Sounds like the 70's mindset all over again. God save us from these extremists!
    Thanked by 1ContraBombarde
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    A lot of people don't know this, but I read in The Page Book that Pope St. Gregory the Great studied the Flemish school of modal accompaniment before composing the music in the Graduale. It wasn't until Guido of Arezzo invented just-temperament solfege that the original Gregorian accompaniments fell out of use. Apparently, the Franco-Roman reformers didn't think the organ voice-leading reflected their (inaccurate) reconstruction of classical Persian grammar.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    Fashions come and go. The thing that makes me a little uneasy, is that I think we are musically and liturgically at a critical point. There are the folks solidly in the chant camp, and the pips and clergy who wouldn't mind if it all went away. Extremes can push the more neutral middle to the edges. I am trying to play this carefully, and encourage, not alienate.
    Thanked by 1mrcopper
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    Uhhuh and when was an organ invented?
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    Uhhuh and when was an organ invented?


    Before Vatican II. ;-) According to Britannica,

    The earliest known organ was the hydraulis of the 3rd century bce, a rudimentary Greek invention, with the wind regulated by water pressure. The first recorded appearance of an exclusively bellow-fed organ, however, was not until almost 400 years later. By the 8th century organs were being built in Europe, and from the 10th century their association with the church had been established. The 15th and 16th centuries witnessed significant tonal and mechanical advances and the emergence of national schools of organ building. By the early 17th century all the essential elements of the instrument had been developed, and subsequent developments involved either tonal changes or technological refinements.
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    Thanks. I did a search myself and was rather astonished, and chastened, by some of the early history. Shut my mouf.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    I would like a show of hands from anyone who did not realize my above statement was a joke... (you know who you are, people...)
    Thanked by 2Gavin jpal
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Alas, if only it was in purple.

    At least then we might "Say the black, do the red, and ignore the purple."
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    Adam, you are never to be taken seriously. Besides, organs were not used in church in the lifetime of Gregory the Great. That came quite a bit later in the western church.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    At least then we might "Say the black, do the red, and ignore the purple."


    Now I understand the meaning of "purple prose." LOL.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    This is why I refuse to adopt the purple standard. Take everything I write as a joke. Or take everything seriously. Doesn't matter to me.
    Thanked by 2CharlesW Adam Wood
  • Paul_OnnonhoaratonPaul_Onnonhoaraton
    Posts: 434
    Friends, just to clarify, my comments about chant "originally" accompanied by organ in the NOH-style were meant in jest, as the NOH harmonies came 1200 years too late. I apologize for any confusion this might have caused. May God bless you all.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    Yes, but NOH accompaniments are the best - let me clarify a bit - they are the best of available accompaniments, I think.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    goodness gracious
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,186
    A bit late. Didn't feel like photoshopping it purple.

    image
    Thanked by 1Andrew_Malton
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,979
    Purple is a state of mind. Think Zen purple. ;-)
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