Missa Sancti Martini - Kyrie

Although I am only an amateur composer, I guess like everyone, we long in a corner of our souls to compose a great work. The Mass is a traditional musical form that challenges the composer to compose for instruments, choir, and solos at the same time. I don't assume that my compositions will be grand and spectacular.

Neither is the Kyrie, the first movement of my Missa Sancti Martini Mass. But composing this little piece brought me joy and I really like the sound of it. The scoring of the instruments, solo and chorus is specific because I based it on the possibilities at hand. Maybe one day I will hear it live, it would be a wonderful experience for me.

I will gladly accept your critique and recommendations. I used a sound library of multiple violins because I don't like the sound of solo violin in Musescore.

What do you think? Should I continue composing other parts of the mass?

   I thought it was a fine piece.

   A few things:

Bar 9:  The thin texture needs a bass line.  I'd keep the cello here.

Bar 21:  choir entry.  Again, I'd fill the chord here by retaining the cello.

   A few adjustments to phrasing might be useful, but generally I liked the feel of the piece.  With the reduced force, I'd certainly use what you have to the fullest-- you create a pleasant and interesting sonority.

Hey man! Great piece. I’m also a Catholic composer, so I wanted to check this out to offer my compliments and any knowledge I have that may help you bring this to the next level of quality.

Ill try to keep it brief, because I can tend to give long detailed analysis:)

Overall feel: this sounds very Mozart-esque. It seems to me like you drew from his style pretty heavily in the intro, outro, and the countermelody lines. At the same time, I think the inner melody with the choir is lovely and more in the modern classical style of what I hear churches singing today in the US. 

From what I can tell, it seems you’re Polish and this is in Polish. I Googled it and it said that Saint Martin is particularly celebrated in Poznan; could you tell me a little more about why you’re writing this for him in mind? What inspired this piece, and what is your goal?
High quality points: I do love the melody. It sounds very sweet, and also has a form and repetition that feels natural and memorable. I think a church would easily pick up something like this. I also do like the flute part especially as a countermelody, and I think it brings a lot of rhythmic variety and sweetness with it as well.

Questions: This is already a good piece, and any questions I have are minor points only to try to help you. If this is in Polish rather than Latin, could you please title it in Polish? I was expecting a Latin piece, so this could help a future choir director distinguish it.

Also, if this is intended to be sung at a general church or Cathedral, could you reconsider your form and instrumentation a little bit to match that style? Generally pieces like this are written for piano/organ, and other instruments are used as accompaniment. I could see this easily being a piece for piano/organ, flute, and SATB choir. Then you could take the piano/organ part and expand it into a string quartet if you wanted it to be played at a Cathedral who had a string quartet.

For the form, I think the general Church congregation would appreciate something a little shorter. I find that an instrumental intro feels nice at about 4-8 bars, and I think an outro here would feel nice at 3-4 bars. (I also think the little stops and the short staccato notes with thin accompaniment takes away from the natural momentum of the piece, so removing those will help the overall flow).

Again I think your melody is wonderful. Could you consider doing a IV-V-I progression on zmiluj sa? I think it would be more pleasant than the F augmented chord you have now. For the end of Pane, could you consider using your flute melody as the final notes of the first Pane? So the melody would end FBC rather than DDC. It would be on an V7 chord. Also keeping the flute & congregation together on that would help the singing.

Then the form: in my mathematical mind, I would think repeating everything twice would be the ideal (like how the priest - congregation does it in the ordinary form), or doing everything three times (like the extraordinary form), but this feels really nice to have 2-2-1. I think it’s more musical that way. You may want to ask a liturgist if having the final section only once would be allowed. Similarly ansk anbout inverting the zmiluj sa Kriste; we don’t do that in the US, but if you guys do, cool.

And something with congregational singing, having the altos & sopranos singing different words at the same time would really lead the congregation off. Could you have the altos match the sopranos more? I do appreciate starting the melody on beat 3 and modulating to G major; I think that’s really nice variation.

And finally, something I’ve learned in my own writing is that repeating a section outright makes it sound flat and boring. I tend to always change something when repeating a section. Strangely, I didn’t feel that way when listening to your piece. I think it might have been because so many of the lines are written in polyphony rather than homophonic style, so they sound more interesting. If so, keep it up:) In polyphony it can be difficult to have all 3 chord tones present all the time, so see if you can include that.

You’ve done a wonderful job, and I hope you keep composing:) If you update the piece, I would love to see your changes. Feel free to check out or offer feedback on my pieces

Cheers!