Introduction

The American choral composer Jake Runestad was born in 1986. He is fascinated with creating musical works that are emotionally raw and embody human feelings and experiences. For Choral Arts Northwest in 2014, Runestad composed and published “Let My Love Be Heard.” This piece is primarily known for being sung by the Cal State Long Beach Choir after a fellow student was killed in the 2015 Paris attacks. Honoring Nohemi Gonzalez, the performance was recorded and posted to SoundCloud and YouTube. There, it quickly gained popularity due to the powerful nature of the devastating circumstances in which it was sung.

The piece “Let My Love Be Heard” uses poetry written by Alfred Noyes. Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) was known for his admiration of traditional English verse, despite the trends of the time moving towards the Modernist movement of the 20th Century. After the death of his first wife, Noyes joined the Catholic Church. This heavily influenced his works, and this poem comes from a set titled “A Prayer.”

Overview

The general style of the piece is contemporary with relatively simple text. Performed acapella, there are plenty of opportunities for interesting chords in the music.

The piece features four big sections, following an introduction. An important part of this piece is the third section. In this section the Tenors and Basses repeat the chords from the introduction while the Sopranos and Altos create a rich texture with consistent triplets on top.

Analysis

Text

The text of this piece is relatively simple and short, but extremely powerful. The full text through “Let my love be heard” is repeated twice, with the last two lines repeated several times echoing until the end of the song. Although the published text is broken up into 8 lines, it is sung in a way that groups the lines into twos, making the text feel as though it is in only 4 lines. This is mirrored again in the rhyme scheme, where the rhymes appear at the end of lines 2 and 4 and again at 6 and 8.

A  Angels, where you soar
B  Up to God’s own light
C  Take my own lost bird
B  On your hearts tonight;

A  And as grief once more
D  Mounts to heaven and sings
C  Let my love be heard
D  Whispering in your wings

Runestad’s setting frequently repeats the second to last line, “Let my love be heard,” almost as if to be begging for anyone to listen, always to the same chord progression.

Texture

The texture remains primarily homophonic between the melody and accompaniment for the first several pages of the song. The melody during the first verse (m. 9-17) is sung by the tenors. The second section feels fuller, now that all four parts are singing together on the same text. The sopranos take over the melody for the second verse (m. 18-26). These two verses, having the same tune and lyrics, differ in the “accompaniment” among the other voice parts. At measure 30, the texture abruptly shifts to a more dense and complex accompaniment. Some may say that this section is polyphonic due to the upper voices singing different melodic lines on the syllable “ah” as the lower voices continue the same “let my love be heard” melody throughout. However, the “ah” lines the sopranos and altos sing can still be heard as an accompaniment. As the accompaniment changes from simple chords to more complex ascending lines, there is a feeling of building towards the song’s climax at measure 45. Following this section, there is a noticeable break that precedes the choir returning to the simple homorhythmic melody and chords from the beginning of the song, this time with softer and slower “ah” lines than the prior section.

Rhythm and Meter

The pulse for the introduction and first section of this piece can be difficult for a listener to identify. It starts off very sparse, with fermatas playing with how we search for a beat. Despite the freedom associated with fermatas, Runestad switches meter often by adding measures of 2/4, 3/4, and 5/4 to ensure that notes are held for the ideal amount of time to best fit the text. We see an example of this in measures 14-16. Measure 14, in 4/4, ends with a fermata followed by one measure of 2/4 before returning to 4/4. One may argue that since measure 14 includes the use of a fermata anyway, it could have instead been notated as a half note with the pickup, “let my,” in the same measure. While notating it that way may not change the sound for the audience, notating these breaks by changing time signatures creates a large visual cue that is difficult for the performers to ignore, giving them a better idea of how long the breaks should last.

At times, there are some quarter note triplets and eighth note triplets that create a contrast against the duple rhythms, particularly in the climactic section. This polyrhythm complicates the listener’s sense of pulse, it is a little easier to follow once the Basses and Tenors start singing their line.

Harmony

This song is written in the key of E Major. In a piece with such desperation, we might expect to feel a lot of tension and release within the chord progressions, perhaps through the use of tense dominant-functioning chords (V, vii°). In contrast, the greatest climactic peak of the song (m. 31-45) completely lacks these chords. Runestad makes frequent use of the vi, I, and IV chords, all containing the tonic “do.” This provides a sense of consistency throughout the whole piece. Another key feature marking these three chords is that only one is minor. Therefore, using the vi chord in between I and IV creates a sense of tension without the dominant V chord needing to be present.

Runestad uses a lot of extended harmonies in this piece to create tension. The most common of these is the IVmaj9 (sometimes IVmaj7), usually highlighting the major seventh in a top voice. (These are marked in the timeline above.) This chord is used as part of the culmination of the progression every time the text says, “let my love be heard”. The “9” extension in particular adds a yearning quality to the harmony. There is also a well-planned build in the third section to the climax, where Runestad continuously repeats that harmonic progression, slowly inverting it until all of the vocal parts are in the higher parts of their respective registers. Ending each of these main sections, including both the climax and the end of the piece, on similar IV9s adds even further to the yearning feeling of the piece and almost feels unfinished, like an unanswered prayer. The unique sense of both home and unsteadiness that these chords provide perfectly encapsulate the longing of the text “let my love be heard.”

Teaching

Jake Runestad’s “Let My Love Be Heard” provides a great opportunity to teach dynamic control and the importance of storytelling in a high school choir. You simply cannot build too quickly or the climax of the piece will lose its meaning and power. With such simple song lyrics, it can be easy for high school students to look or sound bored while performing. However, text this simple can be easily applicable to many students’ lives and can provide them with opportunities to express themselves. I learned this song in my high school choir experience, and I remember a day where our teacher had us right down something that we wanted help with/an answer for in our lives. It helped me and the rest of my classmates to emotionally connect to the piece and informed our performances of it.

This piece would be a great opportunity to expand on students’ abilities to demonstrate proper vowel sounds and the ability to seamlessly blend as a choir. With each voice part spending a significant amount of time singing “ooh” and “ah” vowel accompaniment lines, students risk ruining the performance if they don’t exercise proper breath control, listening, and vowel placement.

This song also provides a teaching opportunity on how to correctly execute a 2 over 3 polyrhythm.

Rehearsal

This piece can be technically challenging for students. Measures 31-45 pose an immediate challenge with the difficult rhythm in the melody of the “ah” lines with the use of a rest on the first beat of each triplet. Creating a warm-up using audiation would ensure that students can hear that first beat in their minds without singing it. This could be done in steps by first counting the full triplet beat, “ta ki da,” several times on various pitches. You could then leave out the first syllable, “ta”,  saying “ki da”, while encouraging students to breathe on the silent first beat as they audiate the correct rhythm. Next, you could break the students back into their sections to sing the actual written notation.

Another challenge that could occur while performing this song is the amount of dynamic control that must be maintained, specifically in the decrescendo, in measures 27 and 28. This could be addressed by including dynamic contrast in vocal warm-ups and by using warm-ups that require the intentional use of breath support. Using “shh” rhythmically, following a conductor’s dynamics during simple scales, and the use of crescendos and decrescendos on a single syllable are all potential examples of such warm-ups.

The most difficult part of this piece to learn is the third section, where you have duple over triple rhythms. It would be helpful to make sure that the “Melody” (Basses and Tenors) and “Accompaniment” (Altos and Sopranos) learn their parts separately and do not combine the two until they each feel confident. When the choir is feeling good about singing that part correctly, make sure that the Basses and Tenors also get used to the triplets for the final section. It is also important to collaborate with your performers and make a detailed plan on how you are going to accurately build the overall shape of the piece, and especially for the climax at the end of the third section.

Performance

Out of all of the aspects of an analysis of this piece, arguably the most important is the use of harmonies. Studying the progressions and how Runestad creates tension and dissonance to reflect the text can heavily influence how to approach performing this piece. Use those dissonant chords to your advantage, and add a slight build to them before backing off. It can create a feeling of fighting to be heard before giving up. Because of that, it is important to draw out the fermatas and let them ring out before moving on to what’s next. An example of this would be taking a longer rest after measure 45 rather than jumping immediately back into the final section of the song. This piece was not written to be metronomically accurate. There are lots of different recordings of this piece, and each of them play with the pulse differently. It is ultimately up to the conductor and/or the performers on what sounds right for their goals of the performance.

It is also important to understand each of the separate elements of the piece. For example, although there are no notated dynamics in the upper voice parts between the pianissimo marking in measure 31 and the fortissimo marking in measure 45, as the director, you should be instructing the choir to steadily grow in dynamic throughout those measures. This allows the climax, and its powerful moment in the form of the song, to be better emphasized. I would also be sure to take careful note of the natural breaks in the meter of this song.