Divinum Mysterium

[Sherry C]

Hi friends,

It's been a coon's age since I posted anything here for general consumption.

"Of the Father's Love Begotten (Divinum Mysterium)" is a Christmas song that I've really liked since first hearing Kemper Crabb doing it as part of his Medieval Christmas concert.

I like playing it on my whistle, so thought I'd come up with a sheet for it so I could play it as a prelude at church during Advent and be a little more confident about not screwing up. The attached sheet is for a D whistle (playing in key of G) with guitar accompaniment. Adding some hand drum (eg. a doumbek, bodhran, or such) also rounds it out nicely.

The song is in an "open meter" or "chant" style. Composer doesn't innately support this format because of all the underlying MIDI performance parameters that it handles, but you can achieve the effect for the score by simply hiding the meters of the measures.

To create the song file that I've attached for "Of the Father's Love Begotten"

• I started with a printed score that I found that had no metering.
• Used Composer's File/New and a 4/4 Blank (Single Instrument) template.
• Entered the notes and lyrics,
• then used Staff Symbols/Barlines/Split measures, and split the measures where I wanted to between the lyric lines.
• Then click-dragged across the extra barlines I didn't want, and deleted them.
• Last of all, I would double-click each meter and then click-check the "Hide Meter" and then "Ok" to save the setting.
• I added chord names, though for this particular piece you can even just have a "drone" accompaniment and it works.

Enjoy, and have a very Merry Christmas!
Sherry