Notes to the Director
The manner in which this brief concert opener and patriotic salute is approached is crucial to audience acceptance and its functional design fulfillment.
The hymn “God of Our Fathers” (The National Hymn) is well-known and extremely majestic in nature and it is important to keep these facts well in mind while studying the score and rehearsing with the ensemble. If the tempos are not controlled and duration of notes not carefully observed, the piece will have a tendency to sound flippant and perhaps ‘Hollywood’ in character, and this is certainly not the nature of this arrangement. From measures 45 and 56 there is a great deal of canonic development and extreme care must be given to the speed and length of the sixteenth note to avoid a hurried, rushed hence muddy and cluttered sound. Again, the key word for rehearsal and performance is Maestoso.
