New Music Upload! (Tu Rex Glóriæ, Christe)

Well, that took long enough. The final movement of my choral work Te Deum Laudámus: Tu Rex Glóriæ, Christe is finally completed! You can hear it in the video below or over on the Works page. All three movements will be released for download and streaming on your favorite platforms in the near future. Thank you all for your support! Enjoy the final movement of Te Deum Laudámus!

As those of you keeping track of the other two movements may have guessed, Tu Rex Glóriæ, Christe, or TRGC for short, is the continuation of the prayer used from the Book of Common Prayer as the text of this choral work. It finishes up the original text from the prayer, which is translated for you down below:

Latin

Tu Rex glóriæ, Christe. Tu Patris sempitérnus es Fílius. Tu ad liberándum susceptúrus hóminem, non horruísti Vírginis úterum. Tu, devícto mortis acúleo, aperuísti credéntibus regna cælórum. Tu ad déxteram Dei sedes, in glória Patris. Judex créderis esse ventúrus. Te ergo quǽsumus, tuis fámulis súbveni, quos pretióso sánguine redemísti. Ætérna fac cum sanctis tuis in glória numerári.

English

Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb. When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge. We therefore pray thee, help thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. Make them to be numbered with thy Saints in glory everlasting.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the translation:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Deum

TRGC is a bit different from the previous two movements. It is a good deal faster, being more of a march tempo. The main melody is carried by the altos while the tenors and basses sing Tu Rex Glóriæ, Christe as an ostinato (repeating rhythmic pattern). This sets TRGC apart from the chorale like texture of the other two movements. Another stark contrast between this and the previous movements would be the middle section. Here, each voice repeats a single word from line 5 of the Latin text. The sopranos and tenors sing staccato while the altos and basses sing in a more legato fashion. This creates an almost pointillistic sound, especially with the differing ostinati used by each voice.

Another interesting aspect of TRGC is that I wrote in a descant for sopranos. A soloist or group of sopranos get a very high melody during the last part of the piece. There are a couple of cool melismas as well. In other words, plenty of time for the sopranos to show off, especially since they're probably already getting twitchy that the altos got the main melody.

While mixing the audio file for TRGC, I encountered a slew of problems and issues. It seemed that Reaper (my DAW) was determined to crash whenever possible. I've lost track of how many times it went belly up on me at this point for seemingly innocuous reasons. Word Builder, the part of Hollywood Choirs that lets me tell the choir what to sing, was just as flaky if not more so than Reaper. I will be publishing an article that deals with how I worked around some of the issues I encountered for any interested composers/producers. Seems like many of the problems I ran into were not documented anywhere online, so hopefully it will keep someone from falling into the same pits that I did.

Last but not least, here is another stained glass window for you. TRGC gets a blue window. I think it turned out better than the red one, but green is still my favorite. You can see those in the previous posts regarding Te Deum Laudámus.

I hope you've enjoyed listening to the three movements of Te Deum Laudámus. It was definitely a wonderful experience to write such a piece. This will be it for choirs for a little bit. The next piece I'm working on will be for guitar and viola and is already well underway. Hopefully it won't take two months to finish like this one did. I won't need Word Builder, so here's hoping for the best.

Thanks for all the support! If you enjoy hearing my music, be sure to Subscribe. You'll get to be among the first to hear new music as it is released, plus get access to cool subscribers only content. It's totally free, and I won't spam your inbox with messages all the time. Maybe one or two messages a month. Facebook or Instagram user? So am I! You can follow me on both platforms by searching NathanCCurtisMusic. See you there!

Nathan C. Curtis

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