Go, Lovely Rose

A Setting of the Edmund Waller poem, for SATB choir.

Go, Lovely Rose

It is intrepid of you even to attempt to set this very famous text - one of my favourites in all of Renaissance English literature - which has been so beautifully set by a number of other great composers, most recently by no less a personage than Eric Whitacre; his setting seems even to have eclipsed the once very popular (and equally beautiful, IMHO) setting by Halsey Stevens. I mention it only because it gives you all the more to live up to by comparison.

Your setting is nice, but only nice. I normally try to be more positive and encouraging, but in the company of other truly remarkable settings of this text, yours needs to make a more striking impression and be much more special. I doubt that I'm unique in that I cannot put the other settings out of my mind and deal with yours strictly on its own merits. To put it in perspective: to my knowledge, only Schubert had the guts the set Schiller's "Ode To Joy" after Beethoven got his hands on it...and Schubert's setting, as great as he was, pales awfully by comparison. Have you ever heard it? I didn't think so. EDIT: it turns out that Schubert wrote his setting in 1815, when he was only 18 years old; though Beethoven worked on it most of his life, his 9th Symphony didn't emerge complete until 8 years later, in 1823. Schubert's song on the text was published posthumously as Op. 111, No. 1. That still doesn't change the fact that no one's ever heard of it. ;)

The tempo of the MIDI is too slow, and if it's any indication of the basic pulse you intend, even a freer interpretation would seem too slow as well, I think. The harmonies are interesting at times, but their movement is rather static. The rhythm (or lack of it) would work well enough - Stevens' setting isn't rhythmically vibrant - but there needs to be something else (like greater melodic verve and direction, which Stevens' setting does have) to carry this along.

I don't know what your immediate plans for this piece are, but I would suggest setting this aside and revisiting it in a few months or years, once you have more experience, and consider revising it at that time. You may be surprised how much more you'll have to bring to the table by then, and you can do your concept and the text better justice, as well as make a better showing among exalted company.

Just a word regarding your score itself. What notation software are you using? It looks like in place of slurs, you're using ties - not a great solution. Most software have a shape function that allows you to create real engraver-style slurs. You might want to consult the manual or the help function to find out how that's done.

You seem to have this habit of ending your text before the resolution of your music, leading you to then repeat the last few words of the text to cause a musical resolution. It feels artificial and forced. I feel this piece could easily lose the last two bars without suffering.

More to come later.

I feel kinda sorry for your poor basses, but I'm not sure how well it would fit this to give them REAL bass notes.

To put it in perspective: to my knowledge, only Schubert had the guts the set Schiller's "Ode To Joy" after Beethoven got his hands on it...and Schubert's setting, as great as he was, pales awfully by comparison. Have you ever heard it? I didn't think so. EDIT: it turns out that Schubert wrote his setting in 1815, when he was only 18 years old; though Beethoven worked on it most of his life, his 9th Symphony didn't emerge complete until 8 years later, in 1823.

It's Tchaikovsky who set the Ode to Joy text, as his thesis to complete his university degree. I think Rubinstein requested that... And well, it wasn't even performed in the end because it wasn't good enough. Poor Tchaik.

A Setting of the Edmund Waller poem, for SATB choir.

Go, Lovely Rose

As has already been said, it is certainly an intrepid spirit indeed that would set a text that has already been given lovely treatment by more than one composer. For that, I think you deserve a lot of credit-- it certainly takes courage to approach these words after hearing the settings by Whitacre, et. al. (I'm actually not a huge fan of Whitacre, but his setting really is lovely and stirring).

I do feel like you are still in the shadow of Whitacre here. That isn't a bad thing-- his treatment of the text is very good, and matches it almost flawlessly, but its only a good starting point. There's a lot you could do to get away from sounding so much like him.

For example:

-Your setting of "tell her that's young" bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Whitacre setting, which likewise uses the same "unfolding" technique. It isn't exactly the same, but its close enough that it made me think of Whitacre, which doesn't help your valiant attempt to stand on your own.

-The rhythms you use on "small is the worth" are also much like the Whitacre. Admittedly, using text painting at all in this scenario probably will mean sounding a lot like the Whitacre, but I think there's more you could do to really make this yours.

-"May read in thee", also very similar to the Whitacre.

There are more examples, but you get the point. Take a listen to the Whitacre-- the more you can sound different, the better. Certainly this isn't a "ripoff" of the Whitacre by any means, but I did find myself thinking of the Whiracre setting more often than I think you'd like.

Overall, I also felt a distinct lack of a primary motive or theme to really knit the piece together. It largely seems to be a collection of really nice harmonic movements that are wholly unconnected overall. Perhaps a stronger theme? Some sort of harmonic motive that would remind us of something you had done before?

I think there's a lot of promise here. You obviously know how to write for choir, and handle the ensemble pretty well overall. I would really love to see the next draft of this piece, as I think you could really make it into something special, especially given the gorgeous text.