Jesus, All My Gladness

This is a work in progress.

Today's post is an arrangement of the first two lines of a hymn called Jesus, All My Gladness. It was harmonized by J.S. Bach. I can't say that I remember it from my days as a soprano in the boy choir. I sang in St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Albany, NY, from around the 3rd to the 6th grade. We must have screeched through it a time or two.

This is a very challenging tune to render in 72 EDO, 7 limit just intonation. I went through it and bent all the notes I had to to make it sound good vertically. I was merciless, and ended up with some very strange horizontal ratios, including 50/27, 40/27, and 35/27, which were necessary to keep the D at 9/10 and still have a decent minor chord. We are basically sinking down a step in 72 EDO to keep the notes sounding in tune, then just arbitrarily coming back up a step to return to the notes we started at.

The numbers in the image above in blue are the chord numbers, from 1 to 22. The numbers in green are the 72 EDO note numbers. I'll add the ratios later if I can find room. I'm still considering what to do about the chord changes. I've used 18 pitches in what would typically be rendered in 12 EDO in only 9 different pitches. I have to be able to do better than that, I would think.

Play it here: or download this link Subscribe here: