Writing for Choir

Writing for choir - a Capella or with accompaniment - is a chance to compose liquidious  lines of lyrical loquaciousness. Enough with the Alliteration! Creating music for a group of singers is a long process of discovering what the words actually say in order to support the text with feeling. Stravinsky stated about music in general:

". . . I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature. . . .
If . . . music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality."

I would say that Stravinsky, coming out of the Romantic tradition, was expressing his support of Neo-classicism. I am not, I must say, a huge follower of the romantic composers; I find it overblown and (dare I say) turgid, like feeling bloated from eating too much broccoli. However, I do feel that music is tied very much to our emotions, even if earlier composers (Bach, Gesualdo, Monteverdi) expressed them in widely varying ways.

Returning to the choir, the words matter very much. For example, in my Nunc Dimittis, which I set in English, expresses the feeling of our speaker, Simeon, when he finally sees the infant Jesus.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

Now Simeon may leave this world quietly and in peace. I have created a slowly pulsating pattern between the organ and choir in 3 flats (I use flats to represent lower, softer ideas).

The organ creates the pattern of rest, while the choir softly emphasizes peace and night. Of course, this does not continue this way throughout - Simeon goes on to talk about the light to lighten. The music changes here to a more glorious sound, the opening of heaven, the light of God shining onto earth.