If Ye Love Me

This is somewhat inspired by Jan Sandstrom's arrangement of Lo, a Rose Ere Blooming and Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, however it is still original and in my personal style. I have been wanting to experiment with multiple choirs in the manner of Renaissance polyphony for some time and came up with idea of having one choir sing the hymn whilst another underlies it and sings phrases derived from it. It is intended to be sung in a resonant acoustic with the two choirs at opposite ends, which will probably create untold problems of direction...

The words of Tallis' hymn are from the Bible:

If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father and he shall give you another comforter, that he may bide with you forever in the spirit of truth.

If ye Love Me, JS20.pdf

I'm not going to lie to you...

When I saw this, I wanted to ignore it. Then when I couldn't ignore it, I wanted to hate it. But I couldn't. You won me over. My compliments on a marvelous treatment, every whit worthy of the original.

I probably don't need to tell you that this particular piece by Tallis is iconic, holding a special, almost sacred place in the choral repertoire and in the history of music. Hence the fact that you decided to arrange it as you have proves that not only are you courageous, but you must have a fair amount of self-confidence. They both serve you in good stead here. While giving Tallis his due in respect and reverence, you have made this piece very much your own.

You set the mood so well at the beginning. Even in the crummy MIDI playback, I was spellbound, wondering what possibly could be coming next. The interplay between the two choirs was masterful - just enough harmonic conflict to keep things really interesting without detracting from the beauty and perfect simplicity of the original.

The only thing I might criticise - and it really is a subjective thing - is I thought you might have done better to have a more "user-friendly" ending, for lack of a better term. I didn't find dissolving back into harmonic ambiguity and leaving it there very convincing or satisfying, even as "cool" as it is.

Again, my compliments.

Could you please post a sound file of some kind? I skimmed through the PDF and it looks quite gorgeous already, but I'd like to hear it fully realized. And I don't have Sibelius, so...

Thanks in advance!

I must say that this is a really really well done piece! The harmony, the melodic movements and the everything is so nicely done. The counterpoint, the voice leading and everything is so beautifully done and crafted.

I agree with J. Lee Graham, I wanted to ignore it, but I can't! >.< ARGH! You have indeed won me over. Any chance of a real life recording of this?

I'm very flattered by your comments. I should perhaps have added that the work is dedicated to my other half and as such was something of a labour of love for me, so I like to think that I have taken extra care over it. In addition, the Tallis hymn has strong memories for me of my time singing with my sixth-form college choir (that's age 16-18, for those not familiar with UK education levels) and I guess this is also partly what motivated me. It's certainly amongst the pieces I'm most proud of. As for the ending; yes, I'm not entirely convinced by it myself but I can't really seem to come up with any other way of finishing the piece at the moment. I may revise it if I think of anything, but I just like the idea of fading away and fragmenting at the close, which several of my favoured contemporary composers use, perhaps rather better than myself.

As for a recording, well, I should approach the director of my university college choir and ask him. I think that we shall be having a group of singers come into our composition class to perform student works in the near future, so that may be an opportunity as well. I'm still a little worried about how easy it is to sing in real life, though; whether the singers will be able to find notes and how the two choirs will be directed at once.

I shall try and post a MP3 soon, bear with me!

The idea is rather good for the ending. But I think it needs to feel like it's gone somewhere. Right now, it's too similar to the beginning. If you do that on purpose, then it should be fine. If you don't want that, then a revision of the ending would be cool!

It's a great piece nevertheless! Your other half should be proud of you! :D

I've put up a sound file, MIDI I'm afraid, but better than nought...

If Ye Love Me.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage