Hallel Post-Nations

“What’s up with the goofy name–“Hallel Post-Nations?” you say. Indeed.

As promised, I continue to chip away at my multi-movement work based on the Hallel Psalms. All the Psalm songs are done, and now I just have a few instrumental movements to finish before bringing the composition to completion and setting a date for a premiere. This movement comes right after the Psalm 117 song, “All You Nations,” hence “post-nations.” (Now that I hear the title by itself, it sure sounds apocalyptic. No matter, I’ll change the title in the end.)

Astute listeners will hear that this movement is a fugue. Or as one person put it, I’m “channeling my inner Bach.” The big difference being that Bach improvised fugues, whereas this took me many hours. One of the fun things about this movement is that it combines the folk style of the songs with the classical style of the instrumental interludes. That is, this fugue will segue directly from “All You Nations” and the guitar and bass will continue to lay down a folkish boom/chunk-a-chunk groove throughout the fugue.

You won’t hear that very well on this mock up MP3, but you’ll see it in the PDF score.

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