Keep Me From Sinking Down

Hello,

I would like to share with you a choral I wrote to sing with the choir to which I'm participating (I sing as Bass). The words are not from me but from a gospel -- I found the text via Google, and picked something at random.

The challenge was then to write something "in the spirit of a gospel", knowing that I'm studying only classical harmonies at the Conservatory and my composition teacher knows nothing about gospel. So I've tried to add a few chromaticism here and there, and some secondary dominants.

I'm afraid that the tonal plan of the piece sounds very classical though, as well as the overall harmonic progression in the phrases.

Anyway, I would appreciate honest feedback about it, because it's the only way I can progress and write better pieces.

Thanks,
Raphael

P.S: The MIDI uses "flute", "oboe", "English horn" and "French horn" for the voices because I can't stand the local rendering of choirs here...

Okay, my honest opinion is that this sounds fantastic! Granted, I won't take up too much of your time here with my attempts at advice, because I think you are already ahead of me (I've never written a choral, and I don't know if I could write one as good as this) The only thing I thought might not be so :In the styly of chorals" Was the consistantly quick chord changes" But then again, That was one of the reasons I liked it so much...Great Progressions. Classical works really good for this I think...

And your right, the midi is horrable for choir, the instruments you chose work much better...

Good Job!

Gospel? I wouldn't say gospel at all, but it's a great piece! Some of the more syncopated rhythms make it a little more upbeat which is nice and you've managed to make the IIb - V - I cadence sound cool, which is impressive. It doesn't quite sound like a choral piece, but that might just be because of the whole midi thing (the wind sound heaps better by the way), but you might want to slow it down a touch for choir... I could hear it being really quite slow and lovely echoes in a church. Anyway, great work!!

You have created a nice choral piece. Unfortunately, the gospel is lacking. I have been playing gospel music by ear in churches since my boyhood days and it is something I continue to study and stay current with just as I do with classical music. I too blend the techniques and philosophies of gospel into my classical choral/vocal writing.

The one thing I think you should ask yourself is what type of gospel music are you trying to write? Gospel like othe forms of music vary in style depending on the era. Of course certain techniques will remain consistent but again, the application changes depending on the time period. Aside from that issue, your voice leading is a little "too classical". That's not to say that gospel music doesn't require good voice leading, its just in a different manner. Gospel music is also usually voiced for SAT or SAB (Baritone). Also, you CAN have mostly diatonic harmonies and still produce a very strong gospel sounding piece. Rhythm will play and important part as well.
I suggest that you listen to some gospel music from the different time periods to get a better idea of what you want or need to do. For the most part the eras of gospel music usualy only last about a decade.

1950's/60s, 70's, 80's, 90's etc. It may be hard at first to recognized what has changed in the music of the various decades, but once you can identify the differences those same differences will seem like night and day!

You have a good choral piece. I wish you good luck on the rest of your composing.

It's a very interesting piece. I hear it more as a madrigal setting than anything else. It could be the meter and the polyphonic phrasing that gives it that feeling. If that is the intended style, then I would suggest speeding it up a little bit at all the verses, but keeping it slow and majestic through the "chorus" part. I think if reworked a little it could be presented as a modern madrigal with certain chord structures from the 21st century.

The text itself is very well set, but the rhythmic aspect of this piece is extremely complex. A small ensemble of talented and well-trained singers will give a good performance of this piece, but a large group will have a hard time staying in sync with the heavily syncopated meter you've layed out for them. Just reading through the music gave me certain concerns about phrasing.

There is a lot of emphasis on the weak beat in the 12/8 section. The 2nd and 3rd beats make comfortable passing beats, but you seem to linger on them and place fairly important words of the phrase on them. This is a technique I would use sparingly, and as a technique. A singer will have a harder time singing a rhythm he doesn't understand. The language has to flow smoothly or else the text has no strength.

I find, typically, that most, if not all songs can be separated in three different categories:

-Emphasis on Text
-Emphasis on Melody/Harmony
-Emphasis on Rhythm

Ask yourself which category you think is most important for this piece, and then what you can do to help it along to be stronger.

In my opinion, a text as powerful as the one you've chosen makes this a strong text piece, but your prosidy is hindering it's success rather than helping it.

Thanks for your interesting comments so far.

At this point, I'd like to reply to the one particular comment from Sean about the language flow: despite my being fluent in English, it is not my mother tongue. In particular, I have no (well, little anyway) idea about which syllables would get more stress than others in the text I selected.

Therefore, although I can understand the comment and will surely try to improve this particular aspect in future compositions, this is not something that will be easy for me in foreign languages. Had the text been in French, then I would surely have been more successful in this area.

The comment from arellys on tempo is interesting. I find the setting of a proper tempo something very difficult. Even more difficult as writing the actual music. Perhaps something that could be interesting is keeping the current tempo for stanzas and slow down a bit the tempo for the chorus, to 66 quarters per minute maybe (that would keep the pulsation steady when moving from C to 12/8, the pulsation being at the dotted quarter instead of the quarter).

Again, I really appreciate the comments. It's a good way to improve, knowing what's effective and what's less effective in one's work.

Raphael

Originally Posted by ram

Thanks for your interesting comments so far.

At this point, I'd like to reply to the one particular comment from Sean about the language flow: despite my being fluent in English, it is not my mother tongue. In particular, I have no (well, little anyway) idea about which syllables would get more stress than others in the text I selected.

Therefore, although I can understand the comment and will surely try to improve this particular aspect in future compositions, this is not something that will be easy for me in foreign languages. Had the text been in French, then I would surely have been more successful in this area.

I hate to sound callous, but perhaps the text would have been more effective if you set it in your native language. You should never set a text that you do not have complete understanding of. I would never set a French poem unless I know it forwards and backwards and all the subtle nuances and inflections inherent to it. There is a great misconception that the ability to speak different languages goes only as far as understanding the meaning of the words. In fact, it is much more complicated than that. Song writers have to be able to act as poets, and in my opinion, no one has a greater understanding of language than a poet.

I have put MP3 realizations of the piece here (a choir version, and a winds version):

http://rmanfredi.free.fr/music/chora...-choir_VBR.mp3
http://rmanfredi.free.fr/music/chora...-winds_VBR.mp3

The score is also available in the same directory, as:

http://rmanfredi.free.fr/music/choral/keep_me.pdf

Raphael