O Sacred Head

[raweber]

With thanks to the folks who have given me advice and feedback on this, I present my brass chorale, based on the German Hymn O Sacred Head, Now Wounded. It is set for two brass quartets, and they trade phrases of the original hymn at the beginning.

This is followed by what was originally conceived as a fugue, but turned into something a bit simpler, but I think still very nice, so I'm calling it a chorale. Some of the flavor of the hymn slips into the chorale section occasionally, and the piece ends with a restatement of the final phrase of the hymn.

I'm not 100% happy with the rendering, yet, but I'm not sure what more do to with it. Give it a listen, and if you wish to make constructive critiques, I welcome them.

Updated Mix: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

And, here are my blog posts about writing and recording this piece:

http://robntweber.wordpress.com/tag/sacred-head/

Thanks,

[cptexas]

Oh, I just love this chorale! This is beautifully done, and I quite enjoyed the listen. I'm also a sucker for antiphony, so the opening made me really happy.

My only comment would be that I'm not sure that the last chord is really needed. The end of the chorale with a ritard I think would sound nice and final. I actually thought the piece ended at that point and the last chord took me by surprise.

Even so, it was beautiful! Is this the new GPO4 brass?

Thanks again for the listen,
-Chris

[raweber]

Thanks for the kind words, Chris.

For everyone else, I've updated the mix a little, based on listening to it on some other systems. I've changed the eq on several of the instruments.

DPDAN, thanks for your offer to run this through Altiverb for me. The reason I didn't take you up on it is because the lead trumpet is from EWQL (their free download this last Christmas) and it already has a fair amount of reverb right in the sample.

Chris, to answer your question, the first trumpet is the EWQL, the baritone is a soundfont that I found, and the remaining 6 horns are all GPO4, a mix of Sam and original GPO.