I set Edgar Allan Poe's "Song" for SATB chorus. Any feedback is
welcome.

http://mkorman.org/bridal.pdf
http://mkorman.org/bridal.midi

Nicely done! I really enjoyed the syncopated rhythms that added some variants to the even quarter notes. Did you plan on treating this like a hymn, in which there would be some give and take of the tempo with each phrase? I would definitely make that clear in the notation, as well as dynamics and a rit. at the end.

Thanks! Indeed, each phrase is supposed to be a separate unit. I thought the fermatas would be enough to indicate that, but I could be more specific.

It's a nice piece. Your cadences are great for instruments with the slow resolution of the inner parts, but you leave little to no time for singers to breathe. To accomodate taking a breath the conductor would have to add a beat at each fermata, do you really want that?

Your rhythm in bar 3 (and similar places) should read eighth, quarter, eighth tied to a quarter to clarify where beat three falls. The third beat is afterall a strong beat in 4/4. Also the contraction o'er allows it to fall on one note, if you spread it out over two notes you can use it's two syllable form o-ver. If Poe wrote "o'er" then his rhythm had it on one beat.

One last comment, OK question; do you really want everyone to sing the same words at the same time? Part of the beauty of SATB writing is voices can comment on what's happening in other voices by singing at different times. To make this easier SATB writing is usually split over 4 staves.

The piece is nice enough, and the voice leading looks OK. I don't see any dynamics and they would really help. Do you sing in a choir? If not you should. If you do then bring this to your choir director for his/her comments.

That is what I had in mind. Do you think that's a bad idea?

Ah, I knew something looked funny about that.

Well, ideally, no I wouldn't. But I'm pretty inexperienced and wanted to start with something simple.

Thanks for your comments.

In my experience with choral music that's not the way it's usually done. Generally cadences are written such that they're quite noticable even when strict time is kept. Then when the conductor adds just a bit of rubato they get more expressive. As written you're not being clear what you want and hence you run the risk of it not being performed as you'd prefer. Adding an entire beat will also skew the overall rhythm. You are best off notating for fairly strict time, thus adding expressiveness adds icing to your cake.

I understand that beginners need to start somewhere. You've got a nice piece started, I was just giving you things to think about. Composing is a lot like playing it takes practice.

I work for the a youth chorus (on the business side) so I know a bit about choral music. Our director brought me a piece yesterday and asked what was wrong with it. I saw right away the sopranos were being asked to sing D above the treble clef. Maybe opera singers can get there and we have a first soprano or two who can get there, but this was a piece for children's chorus. That's the kind of thing that separates those who know what they're doing from those who don't. That's why I suggested you find a choral director to show this to. There's nothing like practical advice from someone who knows.

Thanks, Steve. I'll work on this a bit more and post a revised version.

I’m new to the composer’s forum—and I’m not a composer. They know me over at the piano forum though, and know that I think of myself more as a singer than a pianist. So, given that this is a vocal piece, I’ll venture to make a few comments.

This line seems to be the nub of the poem: “Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame In the breast of him, alas!”

To begin, I’m a little uncomfortable with the soprano line on “In the breast.” It’s a mouthful of consonants fairly high in a soprano’s tessitura. “In the” is on a weak beat, meaning that you can’t sing it with the careless confidence with which you would sing a strong beat. As a tenor, I can attest that most tenors would have difficulty with it. Sopranos--probably less so--but still, I don’t think it would be easy for sopranos either, especially unskilled sopranos.

But looking further at this particular line, I have a few more problems. In the line I quoted above, the operative word strikes me as being “him.” I know you may disagree, but bear with me a bit.

At first blush, I want to suggest that the setting of “him” should trump the phrase, indeed, trump the entire piece. But then we come to the word “alas,” and it seems to make the meaning of the line go limp. Is it really such a bad thing that a man should be—umm, enthralled—at the alter. It seems to me that’s a good thing. Why the sorrowful “alas?”

But what if Poe is using “alas” in an ironic sense, and the underlying meaning is “Oh my!” Remember, these are Victorians. They’re not always up front about these things.

So now I’m suggesting that you might rearrange this phrase so that the word “him” trumps the phrase, but then immediately retrump the phrase on “alas.” You might allow the word “alas” to hang out there on an unresolved chord, or treat it in some other way that highlights it.

I think if you reworked it this way, it would bring some needed asymmetry to both the phrase and the piece, and just add a little quirkiness to the whole thing.

One other comment: I wouldn’t treat “o’er” as two syllables. There is hardly any vowel to grab onto in “er,” so treat it as a final consonant. Another consideration here, it needs to rhyme with “before.”

Tomasino

You might be right. That line isn't exactly supposed to be "pretty", though. I will ask some other singers what they think.

My interpretation of this poem is that it is about a man who sees a woman he loves getting married to someone else ("him"). Thus, it is sorrowful. Make I'm wrong, though.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Can you explain what you mean by "trump the phrase"?

Well, I was taking the viewpoint that "o'er" is pronounced the same as "or", and thus the 'o' would be carried across the two notes, and the 'r' only appears at the very end. I debated re-writing it to 'over', but then, as you said, it wouldn't rhyme with 'before'. I don't use words like "o'er" in casual conversation, so I don't really know what sounds natural.

Thanks for the feedback.

Sure. "Trump the phrase" meaning make it the most important thing in the phrase. Make it the climax of the phrase, if you will.
Yes, the need to rhyme pretty much settles it. But there is another issue, and that is faithfulness to the poet's text. Composer's have a right to insist that performers pay attention to their text and their intent. Poets ought to have the same rights when it comes to composers, it seems to me.

Tomasino

Oh, one more thing. You may very well be right on your interpretation of the poem. I just read it a number of times over, your take makes just as much sense as mine.

Tomasino