January 2, 201016 yr A setting of one of my favorite prayers, for large a cappella ensemble. Magnficat
January 3, 201016 yr Nice piece overall. I enjoyed most of the harmonies (measures 53 and 54 were wonderful) though some of them felt a little off. I think with a little bit of reworking and refining you could really get the harmonies dialed in (try using more major ninth chords and unresolved suspensions :) ). I loved your use of triplets versus duplets (I usually enjoy them, but some people use them all wrong...yours created a great effect and added a lot of movement to the piece). Other than some of the harmonies the only thing I would work on is mixing up your meter a little more. I felt like it was forced to fit within the parameters of common time to much. Some places (most really) are fine in common, but don't be afraid to mix up the time signature. I had the opportunity to work with Reginald Unterseher (an accomplished singer and composer, mostly choral works) a few years back and he taught me one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned in composition. That is to always make the time signature fit the song (mostly the lyrics in choral writing, but the harmonies and melody as well) not the song fit the time signature. My most recent completed choral work changes meter 15 times throughout the piece (often for a single measure). You dont need to mix it up THAT much, but adjusting the meter to better fit the music in a given section will cause the piece to flow much better and will add a lot of motion to it as well. Good luck!
January 3, 201016 yr I agree as far as the meters go. Changing meter is an extremely old technique; it can be found in the music of most Renaissance composers. It provides thematic contrast, as well as musical variety. Check out John Taverner's masses, as well as music by Tallis, Palestrina, and Byrd (the last in particular for his text painting).
January 10, 201016 yr Author I've always enjoyed performing and reading pieces with shifts in time... but I always find it very hard to do so when I am writing my own music...I tried it for a time in my string quartet, and in a few select places in some of my solo songs. I'll try to go back and see where I can compress and stretch to fit more in time with the natural speech patterns. In other news, I am a huge fan of Byrd, Tallis and Palestrina.
