Friday, April 02, 2010

Now Thank We All Our God

This is a work in progress. Today's version is mostly complete. I've generated four and will pick one as the final version.

This version is another of my Transformed Hymns, which take a familiar hymn tune and stretch it out a bit. Each chord of the hymn becomes a measure or several measures of the transformation. Now Thank We All Our God is a Felix Mendelssohn harmonization of a 17th century tune. There are many unusual chord voicings in the arrangement I have, from the Center for Church Music. There are sevenths in the bass and other unusual arrangements. There are also some challenging comma issues, which I work through by switching from one note to another to preserve the harmony. My goal is to make a good just chord, and so I sacrificed melodic consistency sometimes. If a note starts out as a 16/9 to go with a 4/3, then drifts down to a 7/4 as the 7th in a major chord, it does it. No questions asked. Listen at around 1:45 in this version for the gradual 2 step in 72EDO fall in the Bb. Here it is in score form:







Here is a chart of the notes that I used in the piece. Notice how often the C, F, G, A, Bb are used, and that lonely G# passing tone as a major third to the E natural.

The piece is scored for flutes, clarinets, french horns, trombone, tuba, finger pianos, regular pianos, harp, marimba, and vibraphone.

Play it:




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