Welcome to Anthem 18 in my attempt to write a new choir anthem every week for a year. I’m Kevin Mulryne and I hope you will enjoy listening to my progress throughout 2024. Please do visit the website Anthem52.com, follow along on x.com - @realanthem52 or Instagram - @realanthem52 and send me a message to [email protected]. This anthem is based on another Psalm set for the week - this time Psalm cxlvii (147). I used some verses in full and others I missed parts out in order to create a useable set of words. As has happened more than once, I started off with the intention of making this anthem harmonically adventurous but then it turned itself into something more predictable. I do like it, though. Here are the words:   Words for Anthem 18: Great is our Lord and great is his power : yea and his wisdom is infinite. The Lord setteth up the meek : and bringeth the ungodly down to the ground. O sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving :   I also realised that the first 4 notes are identical to last week's opening notes in the soprano (treble) part. That's a bit weird but the anthems sound almost entirely dissimilar so I'm not that concerned about it! I also ignored my own advice from last week on the length of anthems. This one is perhaps the shortest of all so far. It might be a good introit, perhaps. In its short span, there are a lot of notes, however. I got a little bit carried away with the quavers (quarter notes) in the 3/4 section, despite the relatively fast tempo and I think it creates an upbeat, positive character. In this case, I think that's a good thing. The words are clearly meant to be celebratory so the anthem buzzing away with fleet-footed runs seems appropriate. I deliberately played with some sequences of 6ths to see how they work and, despite what I said earlier, some of the harmonies are a little unexpected, providing a frisson of interest, hopefully. I am finding A major a fun key to write in and this anthem doesn't really stray from that - partly due to its short span. The construction is also simple - basically it's A B A B C - see if you can hear that as it wizzes past. Unfortunately, I have managed to make the Logic version very heavy and muffled in the bass so I'll have to try and fix that for next week's anthem.

Ver todos los episodios