Choral Listening Series - Recording# 8

And So It Goes - Billy Joel, arr. Bob Chilcott (performed by The King's Singers)
 

This video contains the score. Yay!
Bob Chilcott was a member of the King's Singers for a long time, and he created this beautiful arrangement of the famous Billy Joel song. He is also singing the baritone part on this recording. I love this piece. This arrangement is performed by a lot of choirs, and with good reason- it's masterfully done.
 
Here's something that applies to both this piece and Danny Boy that we just heard: the use of a homorhythmic texture. "Homorhythmic texture" is a fancy way of saying that all the parts get the same rhythm together at once. For most of the music, you can hear the words happening in all the parts together, but in harmony. This is a style of composition that is popular in a lot of choral music, including many of our anthems that we perform at McDougall. One of the many advantages of this style of writing is that it is easier to get a rich, full sound without exposing too many parts. One of the disadvantages is that it can be difficult to establish a steady beat when there's no other rhythm or accompaniment present.