2 Choral Motets

Heyo! Here are the first two choral pieces I’ve finished enough for feedback. I would love to hear what you enjoy about the pieces, then give any tips about what you think is high quality and how to fix anything that’s lower quality. My main desires are for feedback on the overall feel of the pieces, like the fittingness of the choral parts or the piano. I’ve never written for either before professionally, and these are kind of the test to see if I have potential to create choral music directors would actually purchase. Are these close to professional quality? If not, what could I change?

The goal was to write semi-simple pieces that your average or slightly above average church choir could sing as a Motet or “Anthem” or a choir-only piece during a service. I enjoy purer, diatonic harmonies more, as well as an epic feel at times, so hopefully those come through.

Thanks in advance for any comments you’re willing to give:)

The Assumption:
https://youtu.be/u_uR3quvWiA
Come Holy Spirit Pt. 1:
https://youtu.be/CTrRiL_wY_Q

The 1080 resolution is still not enough for me to be able to see your score clearly with my middle aged eyeballs.  I'd recommend making your videos with fewer bars visible at once so the notes and text are bigger for people viewing on a laptop screen instead of a large desktop monitor if you want them to use the videos as a promotional tool to encourage purchase of your sheet music.  Certainly sounds nice, but I'm too blind to see it to give more detailed feedback!  You can also post a pdf of the score and a sound file for people to use here to review your work. 🙂

I like your "Holy Spirit" but I think the explanatory note at the beginning is a bit too much.  You ask about professional looking scores?  To look professional, assume professionalism on the part of your musicians.  You might write easy parts that can be put together without a lot of rehearsal time, but any choir should understand a simple "stagger breaths throughout" without further explanation on your part.  The conductor/director can explain what that means if any choir members are very new to singing.  

I'm not sure about the direction to take this piece out of time like Gregorian chant.  The accompaniment is very metrical, except for the first few bars, and as such will impose a strict rhythm on the singers.  Did you just mean for that instruction to apply to the first few bars?  If so, then indicate where strict tempo resumes.  If you meant for the whole piece to be a bit loose-y goose-y then a direction for "rubato" here and there may better achieve what you are looking for while keeping accompanist, conductor, and choir together.  Cheers!  Sounds nice!

Thanks for the feedback! For some reason I can see it clearly on my phone screen, and using my Grabdpa’s laptop I could see it with YouTube’s highest resolution (1080p), but apparently you can’t see it. If I cut down on the stagger breathe note, maybe that can save some space and expand the rest.
 

For the “Gregorian Chant” comment, I was intending it to be free from meter, not time. The cadencing of the beginning section phrases doesn’t end neatly on 4-8 beat sections, and if you try to feel it like that, the music would feel wonky like swaying on a ship unexpectedly. Is there a way you prefer that it would be phrased?

Gotcha...  You could just add some accents to indicate where the strong beats are when they contradict the meter, since your music isn't following the meter in the way people assume.  You can also group notes together with brackets over the top of the bars.  Some editors/composers do that to show a hemiola, so people would understand what you meant.  

And don't worry, I believe you that you can see the video just fine.  I've got particularly terrible eyesight.  But I'm not the only person who does, so if you can figure out a way to get fewer bars on the screen at once, so everything is bigger, that would probably be helpful. 🙂

Ok, so to preface, I am in a church choir for a TLM, (and I'm also in the Schola Cantorum so I'm trained to sing the Gregorian chants at Mass, just to brag a little 😏.) Anyway, I was anticipating more traditional style Latin motets, and I'ma be honest with you, the Novus Ordo style with the piano and such makes me really quite uncomfortable, but I said I'd give you some feedback, so I'll try my best. Just beware, I'll probably give very old-fashioned advice with a large bias for Latin Mass aesthetics, so just take what you think is applicable.

The Assumption:

The voice leading on the SATB part is fine, so no criticism there. I do find the bass part really high though (I am bass myself.) At moderate or louder dynamics like this, it will sound strained, even with higher bass singers.

The piano part and flute part I think just add mud and uncomfortable dissonances. The piano part isn't even well written, just looking at it as a pianist myself. Especially since these are supposed to be motets, I'd nix the instrumental parts entirely, except maybe an optional organ reduction.

Finally, the engraving is just really... unproffesional. First of all, the tenor should be in treble clef, unless it's a reduced score. I can't imagine trying to read all those ledger lines! The lyric syllables are divided incorrectly, which made it very awkward to read. Here's a guide: Syllable Rules: Divide Into Syllables, and here are all the syllables of this first motet divided properly: Ma-ry is as-sumed in-to heav-en, Moth-er from Earth, now Moth-er of all! Look at the an-gels gaz-ing up-on her, prais-ing our God for the wom-an He made! Al-le-lu-ia, Hail our Queen, Mar-y! Moth-er you passed through the gates, but you're nev-er too far a-way. Will you show us you're near? Hear our prayer! etc. Other engraving nitpicks, page should be portrait not landscape, the scaling should be larger, it's standard and preferable to include the voice range and instrument names, dynamics in vocal music fit better above the staff, and we need a square bracket! I could probably find even more nitpicky stuff if I looked, but this is a good start.

Come Holy Spirit:

The plain song bit makes this a little more tolerable, but a suspended cymbal in liturgical music?? 😭 I digress.

The voice leading here is also fine.And I echo the criticisms of pateceramics, competent choirs will stagger long held notes, regardless of instruction in the score. And the part about the Gregorian chant being off meter. If you do this, please write it unmetered or with partial barlines like in actual chant notation on just that staff, and in each of the other voices just have one whole note under the entire chant solo. If that doesn't make sense, I can sketch up an example for you, but that should be clear. This is also an engraving problem btw, so as you improve your engraving skills, you'll learn how to engrave less commonplace moments like this. What I explained is just what I would do, but there are certainly other ways to handle it.

Both these motets, but especially this one, have the issue of feeling stagnant to me. Like they sit in the same I-IV-V range of the tonic key and really don't move anywhere else. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it makes for music that can sound uninspired and unoriginal.

Sorry if this all is too harsh, I promise it's in good faith and I hope you are able to take this criticism to heart and let it help you improve as a composer.

God bless, my friend.