Ubi sunt duo vel tres

Hello all,
I recently got back from a district chorus festival, and was so inspired by one of our songs that I translated the text into Latin (I hope it's right?) and composed a song off of it. It was composed in Sibelius and took around an hour and a half, give or take a half hour for peeing and food This piece has some fun points at which it modulates, which seems unnecessary, but it added a flavor which I liked. The lyrics translate thus:

"Where two or three are in my name gathered, there am I amongst them." from Matthew

Here's an MP3
And here's the PDF

Give it a listen, and please do comment on it. Thanks

You translated that yourself? I'm impressed. Your translation is very close to the "official" Vulgate translation, which is:

Ubi enim sunt duo vel tres congregati in nomine meo, ibi sum in medio eorum.

There only seem to be a couple of grammatical errors: first (and it may be more stylistic than an error), you've omitted the word enim from the first phrase, which seems desirable to make the distinction between the statement "where two or three are gathered in my name" and the question "where are two or three gathered in my name?" Enim is not essential, but it adds emphasis, as in "truly, verily." The other was your use of congregate instead of congregati.

Easy for me to say, with a Vulgate on my Bible shelf, and it's better than I might have done with my rusty high-school Latin. Very impressive.

And it's Matthew 18:20, not 29.

It's difficult from the mp3 you've provided to hear what's going on...there seem to be some instrumental tracks playing, and everything is doubled at the octave below, so it all sounds like mud. Looking at the score, I can tell that it would be more effective and flow better with live singers. I like what I see. The chantlike melodic lines are very singable, voice leading looks good...just from the score, it appears to be a good motet. Don't know whether you're amenable, but if I were you, I might want to adapt the music to the official Vulgate translation, but that's of course up to you.

Thanks for sharing this.

Thank you for your words of encouragement and corrections; I was not aware of the Vulgate translation and have added in the enim: it makes for better flow in the first passage anyways.

I've added an updated PDF and MIDI file to the post, and uploaded a new MP3. I don't know what you were talking about with the MP3, as it was of good quality; is it safe to assume that you meant the MIDI was of muddy quality? I fixed that, so it should sound much better. I'd appreciate any further words that you or anyone else might have on the music.

Again, thank you.

Oh, maybe I was listening to the MIDI and it sounded strange. The mp3 is fine. Sounds good! Your handling of movement from dissonance and consonance reminds me somewhat of Aaron Copeland, as does your dialogue between solo and/or unison passages and thicker textures, though your style is your own.

Your counterpoint sounds superb. I especially love the chord and resolution in bar 5. The chord changes around bar 12 sound really powerful. So powerful they could maybe be louder or at least with some cres.s and decres.s in parts. The ending was great!

Thank you very much I'm rather attached to the dynamics because I think that they convey a great effect with the words; in the part of modulation, everything is repeating an echoing quieter and quieter, until ibi sum echoes and is forte, the only forte in the piece. Ibi sum translates to "I am there."