Holy Saturday Vespers

[frephraim]

Someone asked me to compose the music for the idiomela and doxasticon of Holy Saturday Vespers so that his choir can record them for a CD they're working on. Before I give him my compositions, I wanted to present them here to see if anyone has any suggestions how to improve them.

I had a tough time trying to create a smooth melody for the first three idiomela because they all begin with an unaccented syllable followed by two consecutive accented syllables ("Today Hades..."). And in the doxasticon, I was able to preserve the original melody of the first phrase, but I did so at the expense of creating a slight melodic break between the words "mystically" and "prefigure" which are not separated by punctuation. I would be grateful for any suggestions.

 

[phokaeus]

Evlogeite Papa Ephraim,

I might be wrong here, but it looks like there should be a martyria for the return to plagal second mode on the syllable "c'ly" in the Doxasticon. It changes to second mode on "ses" but cadences on the hard-chromatic Pa (what is the Greek name for this, again? "Lyseis," or something like that?).

Forgive me for not having much else to contribute!

 

[π. Ρωμανός Καράνος]

Father Ephraim, evlogeite.

I suggest the following diatonic setting of the phrase "this is the blessed Sabbath" only because I love this modulation in Chrysanthos Theodosopoulos' arrangement. Also, I would prefer only one beat spent on the article "this."

 

[frephraim]

I suggest the following diatonic setting of the phrase "this is the blessed Sabbath" only because I love this modulation in Chrysanthos Theodosopoulos' arrangement. Also, I would prefer only one beat spent on the article "this."

Good idea. Thank you very much!