culture / music

Open Mic Adventures XXV: “Venite, exultemus Domino”

The Portly Politico72 Comments

A quick blurb before today’s post:  I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Pick up a copy today!  Even sharing the above links is a huge help.

Thank you for your support!

—TPP

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Yours portly is going High Protestant this week.  Readers can thank Audre Myers for that one—she sent me the manuscript for her church’s new chant, “Venite, exultemus Domino,” at some point in the last few weeks, and I’ve been playing around with it on the piano.

I have always liked choral music, although I am not great at conducting choirs.  I did spend a good bit of time in college and beyond writing short chorals for saxophone quartets and quintets, and I still enjoy the mental exercise of writing little chorals.

That said, I’d never really attempted to play an actual choral on the piano.  When I play hymns and such in church, I typically improvise the left-hand chords, but I don’t typically read the bass clef verbatim.  Instead, I play the right-hand as written (at least the melody line), and figure out the chord progression by eyeballing the notes in both hands.  I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and it makes picking up new hymns quickly.

However, for this piece, I endeavored to play both hands as written.  The point of a choral is bring out the unique chord voicings the composer writes.  As such, I picked the easiest variation of this chant, the one by Richard Goodson, to try to play for this week’s installment of Open Mic Adventures:

Astute (or even casual) listeners will notice a bit of hesitation on my part in a few places.  After the fourth measure especially, I have to think carefully about the parallel sixths in the right hand and the bass notes in my left hand.

I actually prefer setting 607 below, with its interesting E7 chord on beats 3-4 of the second measure, but I 609 (circled in green) was much easier, being in C major.

Venite, exultemus Domino Transcript

The Goodson version appears in The Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal Church on page 177, where it is labeled “A Song of Creation,” number S 229, according to Hymnary.org.  The text comes from Psalm 95, a song of praise to the Lord.

Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Editions of Open Mic Adventures: