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Thank you! I always wanted to write calm choral music accompanied by thunderstorm effects, but didn't want to be accused of ripping off Eric Whitacre. I'm delighted that I finally managed to achieve this!

Thank you so much!

Just saw this. Thanks for listening! It worked well live, too (which I wasn't sure it would, having never had to balance choir with orchestra before!)

Thanks for listening. There are some spots in this piece I'm just not happy with, so it's encouraging to hear it called "brilliant"!

Danke!

Thanks, Morna! I wish I could share the live performance here; the choir sounded so lovely.

Merci! Avez-vous chanté ce chanson?

Non jamais !

I really appreciate that! It's so cool to hear what happens in people's brains when they listen to my music.

Thank you. So glad you enjoyed it! Even though it can be a complement to The Planets, it's not directly inspired by Holst... but John Williams is in my musical DNA (although I tried to keep it subtle for most of this piece), and HE was certainly inspired by Holst!

Thanks, Tim! I hope the goosebumps continued for the next 11 minutes, too. RUclips analytics tell me a lot of people don't sit through pieces with slow introductions like this, so I'm glad even the beginning was good for you!

Thanks so much! What choir is that?

We're the choir of the Evangelische Studierendengemeinde (protestant student congregation, but anyone can join) at the University of Heidelberg in Germany

Thanks for asking! I think it would, although I would have to rearrange it a bit. Please contact me at nicholasryankelly [at] gmail [dot] com if you'd like to discuss making an SSAA arrangement. Thank you!

@@NicholasRyanKelly Will do. I'll share it with the conductor of the treble choir I sing with and see what she says. We're doing a nature-themed concert in the fall. Love your music!

Thank you for listening!

Thank you for listening!

Thank you! I hear your own string orchestra writing might not actually be so bad, either...

Thanks for listening, Wen Wen!

Thank you!

Welcome back to earth! And thank you! According to my analytics, over 60% of listeners don't stick with this video long enough to make it to heaven. What a shame!

To listen to your music is to bask in the sublime. Thank you!@@NicholasRyanKelly

Thanks for listening. I'll admit that I was thinking mostly about amateur singers when I wrote this one, so I'm glad it also holds up to discerning listeners!

Pretty sure it's part of "Proud Music of the Storm"... I think it's in most later editions of Leaves of Grass, which are available on sites like Project Gutenberg and Wikisource. I always acknowledge at least the author of the text in the video description as well.

Thanks! It was a great performance... wish I could have been there.

Thanks so much! And thanks for singing it. This is one of my most popular pieces (which, ok, isn't really saying that much) and this is easily the best performance of it I've heard. Wonderful work by you and your colleagues!

Thank you so much! Right now, it's only TTBB, but I'm hoping to do a consortium to arrange it for SATB over the summer, so the choirs could premiere the SATB version before XMas 2024.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment! That's kind of the point of the piece, though. I don't want to be super-literal and say the carol represents the alienation a lot of us feel around the holidays, but... framing and context are important, and I sort of thought of the carol as the "villain" of this piece when I was writing it, if that makes any sense. Figuring out how to overcome it--or at least make peace with it--is what ended up driving the entire form, in a way that seemed very much in line with the piece's message. Whether it works is another question entirely... sorry it didn't for you, but I appreciate you listening!

Thank you so much! It would be wonderful you did it with your choir. If it's of interest, you can purchase the score at musicspoke.com/downloads/after-the-wind/

danke!

Thank you! I only WISH it were the face of modern choral music...

Thank you so much! I'm glad it's not too obvious.

Thanks, Clark! I wrote this in like an hour on a plane... and I haven't been able to write something so convincingly simple since then. You know how it goes as a composer!

@@NicholasRyanKelly Yeah, sometimes the simplest ideas are the ones that resonate with people. But an hour? On a plane? I'll have to try that on my next flight :D

Well, it took some time afterwards to get the piano part right, but the harmonic and melodic framework were all there in an hour. One of these years I'll be able to write something so effectively simple again...

Thank you! This text is by Marjorie Pickthall, and the words are in the Public Domain. I think I found her by searching for Public Domain Canadian poets, but I only found a few things that were settable. It's even better if you can work with living poets, which I've been trying to do recently!

Thanks for listening! Glad you like the vibes.

Hi! Thanks for asking about this. In choral music, yes, melody pretty much always comes first for me, and sometimes a general harmonic shape will suggest itself at the same time. But really, that's because the TEXT comes first... I start by memorizing it and getting a feel for its general dramatic arc, so I can start singing it in my head and allowing melodies to come to me. (Interesting story on that note: I'm currently writing a piece for choir and orchestra. Since I think melodically, I wrote the whole 12-minute choral score with chords in a couple weeks... but now it's taking months to flesh out the accompaniment and orchestration. It's just not as easy for me, even though I have lots of instrumental background. Funny how different composers' brains work so differently.)

@NicholasRyanKelly That's so cool and interesting to hear! I love hearing how other composers work and the way the music comes to them. Your work is just so beautiful and the lyrics have such poetry like quality to them. I also wanted to ask if you went to Grad school? It's been something I've been debating but I'm not sure if that would be more debt without benefit for me or what...

@destinyking257 Thank you so much! (But, as with most choral composers, I don't usually write my own lyrics. I did for Cold Moon and Origin, but FINDING good texts and connecting with living poets are skills I wish more choral composers had.) I did a master's degree in composition, but I'm not sure if it helped me write music like this. I was writing much more complex instrumental music at the time, and didn't start writing choral music until after I graduated. So I learned about choral composition from studying scores, singing in choirs, and sight-reading badly at the piano--but having at least some formal training helped me know what to look for in those scores. For whatever that's worth. If you have other questions, please feel free to email me! nicholasryankelly [at] gmail [dot] com

Thank you!

Thanks for listening, Clark!

Thank you, Andrey!

Thank you so much! I hope you are :)

Muchas gracias! Espero que si

Thank you so much! And thanks for listening.

Thank you! It's my favourite mode to write in. (Have you heard Celestial Dream or The Diver? Those ones are also very Lydian, but they DO go on longer!)