After recently building music boxes, taking battle music back to its Vivaldi roots, playing ukulele to an appreciative and sleepy dog, experimenting with AI animation to make a fake virtual choir, and doing some more ff7 soundfont versions, including of my own music, I remember I missed actually writing for choir/voices and try to get back to that… Of course it’s tricky at the moment especially if I want things I can share and have listened to, but, eh, never used to stop me.
The last couple days just been gently getting back into things fairly impulsively, using some words by Hildegard of Bingen and seeing what I came up with. (Just the words and not the chant tunes I know…… controversial….)
I also made some extremely reverby recordings, to pretend I am sixteen people in a cathedral.
These are so far for slightly different vocal groupings, unless singers are prepared to be rather flexible. For the second one I attempted what I remember of “Old German Latin” from singing with Schola Cantorum. For the first, just some vague church Latin….. (and I said “beata” instead of “beati”, making it grammatically nonsensical, oops.)
Vos flores rosarum, qui in effusione sanguinis vestri beati estis
You buds of roses, who in the shedding of your blood are blessed
O mirum admirandum, quod absconsa forma praecellit, ardua in honesta statura, ubi vivens altitudo profert mystica. Unde, o Disibode, surges in fine, succurrente flore omnium ramorum mundi, ut primum surrexisti.
O wonder, O how wondrous! A hidden form, so hard, so high, so steep, surpasses in its lofty honor— where Living Height itself reveals the mysteries. And so, O Disibod, you shall arise at the end of time as first you rose— the flower of all the branches of the world comes to your aid.
trans. Nathaniel Campbell