Today's prompt, quite fittingly, is "resurrection." What better way for me to meditate upon Easter Vigil before the actual celebrations begin?

It's been a year and a bit since I last did anything in Hymmnos. This one, however, is very personal to me, as the lyrics formed in my heart very early on, as soon as I was aware that many of the Hymmnos songs in the Ar tonelico games and in fan creations took on a prayerful tone. A good few songs in the games over the years borrowed from Catholic hymns and prayers, as well as Shinto prayers and kagura music.

Seeing the application of that language, it made complete and perfect sense to me to translate the words of an Easter refrain into Hymmnos, and so I did it -- all the way back in 2011. Hence the first two lines of the lead vocals: (Was yea ra) chsee walasye oz Rifaiah / ALLELUIA wis sarla mean.

To be clear, this is an original song using an existing constructed language. The lyrics and translations, where applicable, can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xxHYMsMNhzIOHWe01J6FTK_fm1uD6yzW/view?usp=sharing

Ten years since I conceived it, I have finally put these words to music. I feel the time has finally come for me to share this melody that has been waiting in the wings for a decade — that said, I certainly couldn't imagine finding the courage to finally write this piece. The result is also more triumphant than I ever could have envisioned it a decade ago.

For this piece, I recorded all vocals, some drums (for background amplification) and both tambourines, and I sequenced the rest. Only the timpani, solo bassoon, and oboe were from VSCO 2; the rest were software defaults / freebs. And on the subject of the timpani, this piece prominently features them -- perhaps an allusion to the fact that over the last seven years, I've generally been assigned to the timpani whenever the choir sang for Easter, Christmas, All Saints, or otherwise major events or feast days, and that I will be drumming in similar fashion tonight. The tambourines are meant to evoke the bells rung at the intonation of the Gloria in excelsis Deo.

In Hymmnos, the word yatse is chanted or sung repeatedly in certain songs to give feelings of joy, courage, strength, hope, or positivity in general. It is chanted like a lot of Japanese kakegoe, or shouts of encouragement that punctuate songs or provide rhythm for an arduous task e.g. fishing, rigging, hauling something heavy in, or even carrying a shrine (for example, わっしょい wasshoi or even どっこいしょ dokkoisho). The near entirety of this piece is punctuated by yatse ya, hence the title. And like a lot of kakegoe, I feel it is done best with songs that feature the rousing beat of a drum.

Special thanks to @LD-W for being my second pair of ears with this piece while my hearing is off; you're a star.

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