Second December Choral work: i thank you God

So I've taken one of my favorite poems (plus one I've already set for voice and piano) and produced a version for SATB (8-part splits at the end) with some interesting metrical things. I'm trying to expand my horizons a bit when it comes to rhythm and meter, since for the longest time i wrote everything in 4/4 with no changes in tempo or anything. I really wanted to concentrate on the melodic and harmonic aspects of my style. Now I really feel that I have a "sound" that I like to write, and I can expand upon it further by doing interesting things with rhythm and texture and the other things that make music so wonderfully diverse. A lot of the themes are common between both versions I've written, but this version is much broader, trying to play with subtle shifts in texture to highlight the textual things I find important or interesting. The tenor and alto lines are really important to me in this piece...they weave back and forth and I really explore the different colors both of the voices can make. There are definitely some things that will probably be changed as I come back to the piece later, but for now I really like the sound it gives, I know I got chills at points when i was writing it...this is definitely one I sketched out long before I brought it to the computer. I knew where I wanted to be tonally with it...it was a matter of bringing the different elements together cohesively. Adding it to Myspace soon.

A quick composition

So I'm now half-done with my goal of completing two choir works this month. I finished in about 2 hours a very small, but I think very pretty arrangement of the simple hymn "Locus Iste". The largest problem for me is, as usual, overcoming the version written in my head by some master. In this case, I took Bruckner's idea and simply put it into my own musical language. I tried to really do more of a re-imagining than starting from scratch. The end result is something that sounds very familiar, but at the same time different. I like the way it sounds. The lovely thing is how the words flow and lend themselves to music so well, but at the same time have a definite rhythmic interest. It's pretty short, and I'll probably upload it to myspace later.

New Toy: Twitter

Fun with monotony! Woo!

And happy December Everyone! I'm going to try to compose at least 2 new pieces this month for choir. Wish me luck!