I have written an acapella arrangement for three voices (SAT, or really AAT/B), a nostalgic song about Scotland based around the melody from the first movement of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.

I persuaded my 18 year old son (tenor/baritone) and 14 year old daughter (alto) to sing it with me.

Below is the finished article as good as we could get it in a couple of hours. I'm very proud of them/us! If you scroll down a bit, you can follow the score instead and spot our mistakes in the pdf below.

Audio:

If you have a handy vocal trio available to you and want to have a try, you can access the score here on Noteflight.

PROCESS

I used Noteflight to compose this arrangement. It's the first time I've used it (I've previously used MuseScore). I also have a little USB midi keyboard for note input. I got the hang of Noteflight quite well. I worked in two large chunks rather than following the 12 week programme, because I probably just work better in chunks of hyperfocus.

I'd aimed to keep to the same key as the original symphony (A minor) but I accidentally wrote the introduction in E minor instinctively, so the rest had to be in E minor. :shrug: The section from "Oh where shall I go" to "silvery skies" is my own tune.

It turns out to be relatively tricky to sing, and I think the tenor line isn't pitched very well, probably with too large a range. I think some of the octaves are wrong. My son can manage it (perhaps in varying octaves) but we're also not 100% sure he's a tenor. So, proper musicians may need to adapt a bit. The two higher voices are really just both altos, and while the top line has a few more Ds and is mostly a bit higher, the middle line actually has the highest note (an E).

The first verse of the lyrics I wrote with the help of my daughter. Our brainstorm doc was entitled "Scotland, IDK" due to a Gen Z helping me. For the other verses, I asked GPT to produce three more in a similar vein, then rewrote the appalling mush that resulted into slightly less appalling mush.

The theme is from the beginning of Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3, "Scottish". I'd recently been playing this piece on the viola at my community orchestra in Billingham, UK (unexpectedly, the viola is the only stringed instrument to carry the theme, along with the oboes, clarinets and horns, which was a treat for us).

It was composed in the first half of the 19th century after Mendelssohn (a German composer) had visited the ruins of Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh:

Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my "Scottish" Symphony.

Here's the Mendelssohn.

This post was first published here.

Victoria Jones

The North Land