Category: Heath Morber

Posted on by Ben

English Motets for the Liturgical Year

An announcement from my colleague Heath Morber on our latest project:

I’m very excited to announce the follow-up to my first project (Bread from Heaven, available here) with the arrival of English Motets for the Church Year. I scoured two-and three-part excerpts from the Mass Ordinary settings of the Renaissance masters, and fit them with English texts from the liturgical seasons and various feast days. Each season/feast has a two and a three-part setting of a text relevant to the occasion (e.g. “Drop down dew from above” for Advent, “You are Peter” for Peter and Paul, etc.), and each motet has been transposed for various voicings. All in all, the collection has 40 motets in two voicings, and a bonus motet for weddings comes to 81 different settings!

In addition, I’ll have other transpositions and voicings (including SAB versions!) in a website that my colleague, Ben Yanke, has set up. I’ll be adding settings to that site regularly. The password for the site is in the hard copy of EMCY itself, so you’ll want to grab at least one book to take advantage of the full gamut of resources!

The book can be purchased at lulu.com, paperback (Link) or coil-bound (Link). An extensive sample of the collection can be found here. Recordings are already rolling in; a couple examples are below to get a sense of the collection.

These can be done with as few as two or three skilled singers! I hope this will be a great resource for your parish community!

Buy Paperback | Buy Coil Bound
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Posted on by Ben

Bread From Heaven: New Book of English Eucharistic Motets

An announcement from my colleague Heath Morber:

At the behest of (and with the help of) my colleague Ben Yanke, I’ve just released a collection of motets entitled “Bread From Heaven”, drawn from existing works from the Renaissance masters and set with English Eucharistic texts.

These are two- and three-part motets from des Pres, di Lasso, and Palestrina, drawn mostly from excerpts within their Latin Mass settings. Using seven Eucharistic texts (the “Ad Libitum” antiphons in the Roman Gradual), I fitted the English text to the original notes (modifying some rhythms) and transposed each for multiple voice configurations (SA, AT, SAT, ATB, etc.) Each text has a two- and three- part setting and multiple editions for a total of 14 different motets with 49 total settings!

I’ve sung nearly all of these with students here at St. John’s in Champaign, IL and they’ve been perfect for times when I can only round up a talented cantor or two and want something dignified to use for communion.

The collection can be found at lulu.com, direct link here:

Coil-Bound | Paperback

Please note the extensive sample (also available here); it gives you a good feel for the flavor of the whole collection.

I do hope that this will be a great resource for your music program!