Music for the Praises of Sunday Orthros in English

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frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Dear friends,

I am now in the process of composing the rest of the music for my incomplete Orthros book, using the translations of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery. This post contains my rough draft of the Praises of Sunday Orthros in first mode (in both sticheraric and heirmologic melodies), and God willing, I will finish one mode per week for the next seven weeks and post them here, too.

I will greatly appreciate any suggestions or corrections before I neatly type them up.

+Papa Ephraim
 

Attachments

  • Praises - First Mode.pdf
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romanos4

romanos4

Παλαιό Μέλος
frephraim said:
Dear friends,

I am now in the process of composing the rest of the music for my incomplete Orthros book, using the translations of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery. This post contains my rough draft of the Praises of Sunday Orthros in first mode (in both sticheraric and heirmologic melodies), and God willing, I will finish one mode per week for the next seven weeks and post them here, too.

I will greatly appreciate any suggestions or corrections before I neatly type them up.

+Papa Ephraim
Click to expand...

Papa Ephraim,

First of all let me extend a personal note of gratitude for the work that you do and my friends and I are thrilled to have such high quality scores in English to chant from to help serve the needs of our parish.

I am also pleased that you're continuing to build on what you've already placed on the St. Anthony's Monastery website - Glory to God!

I noticed a few minor things in reviewing your scores:

I suppose one thing, in the 5th (long) Stichera, 6th line, to include a diatonic pthora on the matyria of pa to place the melody back into diatonic (between "Thee." and "and Hades...") from hard chromatic.

In your brief section, 2nd Stichera, the verse ends on Di but then you begin the hymn with an Ypsele - but it should indicate that jump from Pa vs. from Di so you may wish to have a martyria of Pa or change the symbol on "Thou" to an Oligon.

Thanks - I look forward to seeing your other scores!

Ross
 
F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Thank you very much, Ross, for your kind words and for catching those typos! I will fix them when I type up the final version.
 
S

saltypsalti

Παλαιό Μέλος
Thank you Father Ephraim. It came a little late as I have completed a draft of Mode 1 for my own people here. A few melodic gordian knots to work out, and a few typos.

It's nice to see, but according to the old saying: "Bout time!"

John
 
F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Here are my rough drafts for the Praises of Sunday Orthros in second mode.
 

Attachments

  • Praises - Second Mode.pdf
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romanos4

romanos4

Παλαιό Μέλος
Hi Papa Ephraim:

I'm not done reviewing but one small thing I found:

In the verse for the 5th Stichera on page 7 of the PDF - I think you end "flute" on Ga and not Di. You could start "praise" after the martyia on ke (replace the ison with an oligon) and that would work. "flute" could be an oligon as well but that's probably not a real option.

Otherwise at first glance everything looks good - the short/hard chromatic looks good!

Ross
 
F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Here are my rough drafts for third mode.
 

Attachments

  • Praises - Third Mode.pdf
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F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Here are my rough drafts for fourth mode.
 

Attachments

  • Praises - Fourth Mode.pdf
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romanos4

romanos4

Παλαιό Μέλος
frephraim said:
Here are my rough drafts for third mode.
Click to expand...

Papa Ephraim,

Not only did I not catch any mistakes but I think these are exceptional - one thing I that stood out to me was, in both versions of the 5th Stichera - your use of Hard Chromatic and Zygos respectively on "tears".

Really enjoyed reviewing these 3rd mode compositions.

-R.
 
F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
romanos4 said:
Not only did I not catch any mistakes but I think these are exceptional
-R.
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Thank you for your kind words, but I only give myself a B+ for these compositions because they don't quite have the same diversity of formulas as the Greek originals do. I find it very challenging to compose hymns in such a way that they utilize as many different formulas as possible. In other words, if someone were to count how many different formulas there are in my compositions for these eight hymns of the Praises and compare this number with how many there are in the Greek originals, I am certain that there would be more formulas in the originals.
 
romanos4

romanos4

Παλαιό Μέλος
frephraim said:
Thank you for your kind words, but I only give myself a B+ for these compositions because they don't quite have the same diversity of formulas as the Greek originals do. I find it very challenging to compose hymns in such a way that they utilize as many different formulas as possible. In other words, if someone were to count how many different formulas there are in my compositions for these eight hymns of the Praises and compare this number with how many there are in the Greek originals, I am certain that there would be more formulas in the originals.
Click to expand...

Well one thing I'm somewhat thankful for during the summer months - as with the last 2 weeks, we've had the opportunity to chant all 8 Resurrectional Sticherar of the Ainoi - which when you get to those back 4 you see some longer and somewhat more elaborate compositions and so instead of ending with 4 prosomia we get to chant those idiomela - perhaps a once-a-year occurrence, and thus one naturally has to pay more attention to all 8 stichera.

Perhaps you give yourself a B+ when you're accounting for the overall diversity of the scores with respect to formula choice, but that you're choosing formula that work well, are also context sensitive, not to mention you've done well to utilize the formulas in a way that makes the scores pleasant to chant to me is great. Very little to no "sharp" turns or awkward phrases that I saw in chanting them to myself.

As I mentioned I thought there were a lot of nice moments - also in 3rd mode when you modulated into Plagal 1st on Ke (I think once maybe twice).

Anyway - as they say, "if it were easy, more people would do it" - but nonetheless I think they are of good quality, though as someone who has been seriously chanting relatively few years compared to others who participate in this site I'm sure there might be other nuances that I've missed.

R.
 
F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Here are my rough drafts for plagal first mode.
 

Attachments

  • Praises - Plagal First Mode.pdf
    708.6 KB · Views: 51
F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Here are my rough drafts for plagal second mode.
 

Attachments

  • Praises - Plagal Second Mode.pdf
    515.4 KB · Views: 47
GabrielCremeens

GabrielCremeens

Music Director at St. George, Albuquerque, NM
frephraim said:
Here are my rough drafts for plagal second mode.
Click to expand...

Papa Ephraim, evlogeite,

I just realized that, when we were talking about the melody on page 6, I forgot to put a hard chromatic fthora of di somewhere on line 7, so that we return to the chromatic scale after the agia phrase for "compassion wrought for us".

-Gabriel
 
S

saltypsalti

Παλαιό Μέλος
frephraim said:
Here are my rough drafts for plagal second mode.
Click to expand...

π. Εφ. --Ευλογιτε --My only comment on a quick first sitzprobe of this as a latecomer to this discussion --I would question the Πα cadence on the first stichera on "Thy people" as it makes the sentence appear to end,... then picks up again on "and trusting". I realize this is probably a judgement call, as one of the faults, IMHO of HTM's translations is that it often "dies the death of a thousand commas" and the sentence goes on in a perpetual endless noodle.

One solution would be to extend the αγια bridge you already set up out to Thy people, back to hard chromatic, ison, ison on "and trusting", then pretty much as you have it. I can write it out if you'd like.

I'm just shooting from the hip, as we say out here in the West.

JPP
 
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F

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Thank you for sharing that suggestion with me John. The point you make is a valid concern that we composers have to be careful about in general, especially since the hymongraphers in Greek did not seem to hesitate to string together a seemingly endless number of dependent clauses (usually participial phrases).

But in this particular troparion, the cadence on Pa is between two independent clauses. Perhaps that is why the Greek version of the melody also has a cadence on Pa between the two independent clauses.

I don't think there would be anything "wrong" about the way you suggest the melody should be, but perhaps the Greek melodists avoided that approach because it would result in too many consecutive medial cadences on Di.
 
S

saltypsalti

Παλαιό Μέλος
frephraim said:
Thank you for sharing that suggestion with me John. The point you make is a valid concern that we composers have to be careful about in general, especially since the hymongraphers in Greek did not seem to hesitate to string together a seemingly endless number of dependent clauses (usually participial phrases). QUOTE]

Perhaps a glaring example of what works in Greek doesn't necessarily work in English (from what I have seen Greek grammatic flexibility is quite staggering from an English perspective). I cannot begin to tell of the many doxastica (and I am sure you know what I am talking about) I;ve chanted cold from text only that have been "where does this end anyway???"

My good English teachers would have had a fit.

JPP
Click to expand...
 
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