Think not of it, sweet one so!

This setting of John Keat's poem falls in the traditional idiom. Text painting is fairly straightforward, with literal interpretation as the rule. Like my other choral pieces, I have chosen a fairly modern engraving style, hiding staves that are not currently instructed to play or sing. Although this piece treats the choir itself as an instrument, and generally avoids isolated voices or men's/women's duets, this technique still achieves a cleaner, more polished look-- at least in my opinion.

Think not of it, sweet one so!

I like your ideas here, however, I'm not sure I like this sort of set up. It's very hard to follow - despite the hiding staves, etc. Musically, you have so me interesting ideas here - however, I think a little more development and some contrast would suit this work nicely. It seems that you state one idea over and over again with very little change in texture, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't really give the text nor the choir a chance to shine - it's very hymnlike (which may be something your going for, not sure.)

It is the general feel that I am going for. I should have mentioned that this piece was written as part of a portfolio, with this being the "safest" and most conventional of it. (The portfolio gradually becomes more "daring", the last piece being a partially atonal and aleatory piece with more free structure).

Still, I think there's a lot of room for improvement in this area, and I've been debating whether this piece in particular needs the more modern engraving style. (Again, I did want the portfolio to have consistency, and I think the style does work for other pieces). I'm going to be revising this one soon, and I think I'm going to return to a more traditional engraving approach in order to match the more traditional style of the music.

Thank you for your comments!

I was going to ask the same question - why excise staves from the score? Singers don't usually do too well with things like that... Certainly there's a use for it, but in this idiom, I'm not really sure it's necessary.

This setting of John Keat's poem falls in the traditional idiom. Text painting is fairly straightforward, with literal interpretation as the rule.

Like my other choral pieces, I have chosen a fairly modern engraving style, hiding staves that are not currently instructed to play or sing. Although this piece treats the choir itself as an instrument, and generally avoids isolated voices or men's/women's duets, this technique still achieves a cleaner, more polished look-- at least in my opinion.

Think not of it, sweet one so!

First off: I really like it, as a whole. It has really nice moments that choirs will eat up. However,you lost me during the middle section (shift to F#)- it seemed to loose some of the cohesiveness through here.

Notation issues- As a singer/chorister here are the things that would confuse me if I was trying to read this score:

-Leaving out chunks of staves is really more trouble than it's worth- choir singers like to know where they are in relation to other parts, even when they are resting.

-I know lots of composers have done it in vocal scores in the past, but slur markings really do confuse choirs when they sing, since we are accustomed to them indicating melismatic syllables. What exactly are you trying to achieve with the slurs?

I really like how you put the time signature above the staves, but you might want to consider removing the bottom part and just indicating how many quarter notes are in each bar. Gorecki did it in his Totus Tuus, and it's really easy to read.

I really like the piece, and I would love to hear it by a live choir where they can really shape the phrases.

Thanks!

DeLessin: Thanks for your comments. In particular, I hadn't realized how confusing the slur markings actually were. I haven't uploaded a new version of the score yet, but I did go through and rewrite them from scratch. Initially, I had an somewhat experimental idea for how I was going to use them, but I abandoned it early on. Unfortunately, because I did not excise this idea from the initial ideas, when I later copy-pasted sections of music, it retained its confusing slurs, and when I went through the score to make them "consistent", I merely ended up spreading this "disease" through the whole thing! // I've also removed the "dropped staves" notation in the latest draft. As I've mentioned, a large part of why this was initially the style I chose had to do with the piece's place within a portfolio of scores-- most of which were engraved in a very modern style. I chose consistency of engraving over what was necessarily best for this piece-- now that I'm re-evaluating this piece from a more isolated perspective, I'm returning it to a much more "traditional" style. // I really appreciate your great feedback. I'm going to be submitting this piece to a few competitions, if by some miracle it places and I get a good recording, I'll make sure to post it. Thank you once again, Curtis Schweitzer

i really adore your harmonic language here, the 2-4-5 pitches work well for my ears. careful of the parallel fifths very low in the bass, they tend to sound very muddy, and they do stand out quite a bit.

the only thing i would say is that the key changes are all a bit sudden, i think they would be effective if you started to use shared chords between the two keys 5-6 measures before the key change instead of a direct key change. i hate to sound mean, because i'm not trying to be at /all/ - but it's just a bit juvenile to parade through all the keys like that. you absolutely have the smarts to do so more effectively

Wow...I love it. Just love it. This is a perfectly lovely treatment of a beautiful text. Your decision to keep this simple and sweet melodically while getting a little adventurous with relatively rich harmonic language is right on. The tenderness and sincerity of this setting really touched my heart.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the open chords nearer the beginning, but once I imagined how they would sound chorally, I realised you knew perfectly well what you wanted there, and it would be effective. Unfortunately, as is often the case with choral music, electronic renderings are a little ungrateful...often the better the piece, the worse it'll sound in playback. You've handled the voice parts nicely, and I really enjoyed singing along with some of the parts. Choirs and audiences will really love this piece.

I do agree with some of what has been said previously about the notation style...I too was put off a bit by the excision of staves, etc. and the fact that you are rethinking this is wise. I can understand the idea of wanting to keep things consistent in a portfolio, but if the individual pieces vary in style, perhaps the notation style should reflect that, and the inconsistency wouldn't seem amiss. My modern stuff is notated differently than my Classical Revival works, and well so, I think.

Really, I love your style. Looking forward to hearing more from you!