For my piece I knew I wanted to write for choir accompanied by brass quintet—
two ensembles I love to write for and perform with. Selecting a text is always the
trickiest step for me if I don’t already have words in mind for a piece. Brass and choir
always says praise anthem to me, so I thought I would look for a praise psalm, not too
long but still meaningful, that I could set. In the end I settled on Psalm 134.
When it came to actually composing the piece, I drew a lot of inspiration from
one of my favorite composers: Eric Ewazen. I love the way he uses complex meters and
harmonies but is able to still make his pieces easy to listen to, something I tried to
emulate for this piece.
The form of the piece is fairly simple, four different settings of the psalm text with
the same melody, usually with brass interludes between, and a coda on “hallelujah.” One
of the first elements of the piece I conceived of was the modulations, in fact when I first
wrote the melody I wrote it in two different keys, building the modulation into it; to me,
nothing says “praise hymn” like key changes, so I incorporated a lot (eight in total) of
very bright sounding modulations (major seconds, major thirds, perfect fourths).
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