Category: Church music

Fire of Justice, Fire of Love (choir, organ, & trumpet)

If you’re a church choir director, this is a good number for Pentecost. It can be done a number of ways: the basic configuration is the congregation and choir (in unison) singing the short refrain (a bulletin insert graphic comes with the choir parts) and the choir, or a section of the choir, or a soloist singing the refrains. The trumpet descant may be played on any soprano solo melody instrument, or if necessary by the organist (organists know what to do in order to do this).

I’m pleased to finally be able to have a demo of this version with full orchestration using the Cantai synth voices. There’s also a good video demo of the Lakewood UCC choir doing it as just a simple hymn. I like it that way ever bit as much as this fancy “downtown” version with organ and trumpet.

I write lots of secular music and arrangements, too. But, I’m honored even as an octogenarian to be able to have a church music director/keyboardist position. Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, Handel all had jobs as church musicians. It’s heartening to realize that even they had to get up early on Sunday mornings!

Sheet Music available from
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1226200/Product.aspx
and
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/fire-of-justice-fire-of-love-digital-sheet-music/22380866.

#music #organ #trumpet #choir #church #sacred

Carol of the Birds (Curoo, Curoo)

It’s Eastertide, nevertheless, this wonderful Irish Christmas carol from the 1800s, was the next on my project list: getting caught up on posting all my choral pieces and arrangements to Hal Leonard’s ArrangeMe.com. Part of that getting caught up is making score videos and posting here, as well as getting the links inserted on my Compositions page. When ArrangeMe gives me the publication links, I post those to YT, IG (personal & business), and here.

That’s part of my cycle of completion. I remember reading Stephan King—in his book on writing I think it was—that he wondered if writing weren’t some sort of physical compulsion. That the hand needed to be putting words on the page. For me, writing pieces and arrangements are times when I lose complete sense of time, even hunger. And I’m not able to turn that compulsion off until I’ve completed the cycle. Getting audio and score and links posted (a tangible record of the effort), such as this post, completes the cycle.

So…thanks for putting up with my compulsion!

We Come to Sing Our Joyful Songs

Robert Helps, a friend, amazing concert pianist, and several times roommate, told me once that when he hit a dry spell as a composer he moved to doing lots of accompanying of vocalists. Years in fact. It was part of a larger conversation about the unevenness of famous composers. He pointed out that the output of composers tended to come in clumps. They didn’t have a tidy schedule of releases as corporate pop groups do today.

I’ve hit a dry spell of my own. Partly being 81, partly feeling my way toward myself own compositional growth (that’s not a conscious process!), and partly feeling completely irrelevant in a TikTok algorithmic world.

I’m not the pianist Bob was by a long shot, but I do have my own skill set which includes enjoying arranging folk tunes (happens to be my best sellers actually), so while I wait for my unconsciousness to sort out where I’m headed compositionally, I’m devoting myself to arranging folks tunes. Here’s one that’s fun to sing with a choir.

The original folk tune’s range is an octave and a fourth; too wide for the average church choir singer. So, my main task was finding ways to fold the tune upon itself to stay within a 6th or 7th and still have it feel as if that that’s the way it always was! The accompanying optional instrumental obbligato has the tune in it’s original form (slightly embellished) if you’re curious about the details.

Sheet music available at
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1978549/Product.aspx and
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/we-come-to-sing-our-joyful-songs-23701516.html.

Be Still and Know That I Am God

Waaaay back in 1993 when I wrote this, it was written for a men’s chorus (TTBB) and performed at USF, Dr. John Richmond conducting (the piece is dedicated to John who was a supporter of mine in a department in which I had few supporters…I am forever grateful to him and a those few other friends).

Unfortunately, that concert was not recorded so I don’t have a record of it. I can’t find the original TTBB score either. But, at some point before that score was lost, I made a SATB version of the piece. It works well as a solo madrigal type group, or a full chorus.

This is another of those cyber choral renditions. PLEASE remember that the reason I’m using these cyber choirs tracks is to have demos to go with the scores on sale at sheetmusicdirect, etc. They’re not intended to be “real” music recodings.

My only hope is that some choir director will elect to perform and record the piece(s) out of pity for the world so these cyborgs can disppear, replaced by real humnas making music.

PS: I do wish the soprano had less of a vibrato, and the tenor a bit more. The score has a keyboard, preferably for rehearsal only.

God Be In Our Heads

The choir at Lakewood UCC, where I’m the music director, did this last year and they did a terrific job. I changed four measures of the final score so I couldn’t use the tape of their live performance for the demo of the sheet music or I would have. They did that good of a job. The Cantai synth voices will have to do for the purposes of demon.

The text I cobbled together from various sources: Salisbury Book of Hours, 1514 (ref: Mark 12:30 and Psalm 40:8), various ancient Irish sources (Carmina Gadelica, Bridgid of Gael, other traditional Gaelic verses) plus original text of my own.

This is a very easy choral piece: just two parts, women and men…not even any chords. The range of the parts is narrow which keeps the sound good.

Sheet music for God Be in Our Heads available at
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1594283/Product.aspx or
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/god-be-in-our-heads-22830185.html

Resignation

I’m in the process of doing the necessary work to distribute three new digital albums to the various streaming services. Part of that is visiting the four previous albums of mine that are already distributed to see if they’re so awful I should just pay to have them deleted from distribution (it’s something that you can do). That entails listing to them with new ears.

While doing so, I realized I still like what I did on this album, in particular this tune, Resignation.

Here’s a link to the complete album you can listen to YouTube Music.

Sweet Rivers (solo piano)

Hal Leonard, the world’s largest sheet music publisher, runs a site called ArrangeMe which gives composers & arrangers a vehicle to self publish their arrangements of pop tunes–Hal Leonard owns the rights to a vast number of pops songs all of which are available to arrange through ArrangeMe–and of tunes in the public domain. As well, it provides a self-publishing platform for composers of their original works. When there’s a sale, the composer or arranger make a percentage and Hal Leonard gets a percentage.

If you go to the Compositions page of my website, you’ll links to those two sites for almost all of my compositions that are for instrumental solos, piano solos, organ solos, and choral/vocal music. (I don’t bother trying to sell scores of my symphonic music and concerti since those are not really something people are shopping for.)

Pianists seem to buy my folk song and hymn tune arrangements and organists my original music although that’s not always the case. It’s not gonna pay my mortgage, but I do make steady sales. My videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@hiltonkeanjones) are my main channel for promoting my music. There’s probably other ways that would increase sales, but I’m not business savvy. Suggestions always welcome!

I love this tune: Sweet Rivers. The composer of the tune is anonymous and the tune is found in William Walker’s 1835 Souther Harmony, and Musical Coompanion. I could play it over and over again. It makes me happy and makes me smile. Check out the words and various instances of the tune in different hymnals at https://hymnary.org/text/sweet_rivers_of_redeeming_love. This is real old-timey music at its best.

Hosanna (for pipe organ)

The problem for most working pipe organists is that most interesting organ repertoire is too hard to work up new pieces on a weekly basis and usually too long for a service. In short, the interesting literature is suitable for recital but not church service use. Add to that is the fact that (notice I kept saying “interesting” in the forgoing paragraph) most stuff that’s the right length and difficulty for weekly use is beige arrangements of boring hymn tunes. Nothing wrong with hymn tune arrangements–I’ve written my share–just don’t make them beige and boring.

Anyway, two friends are getting married and they asked me to play organ at their coming wedding. I haven’t gone near an organ in quite a while. In fact, at 81 (this month) I’ve managed to live long enough to have two pairs of pipe organ shoes literally rot and fall apart. So, I ordered a fancy new pair of organ shoes (fancy: suede soles and built up heels) and to motivate myself to practice, I’m in the process of writing a bunch of new organ music that’s (hopefully) interesting and the right length and difficulty for weekly service use.

Any former students who want to perform one of them, just write me and I’ll send you a free PDF. Otherwise, they’re available at https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1906100/Product.aspx and https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/hosanna-23610675.html.

4 Sets of Trumpet Descants on Familiar Christmas Carols

Sheet music should be online at sheetmusicdirect and sheetmsicplus by 10/6/25. These four sets can be played, a different descant for every verse, or the performer is welcome to pick and chose which to do and for which verses. This recordings shows them all in an order that works if all are done in a set.

Twilight Peal

My old faithful music notation software will no longer work on new OS so having to convert, literally, hundreds of pieces to the new software. I don’t dare listen to any of them or I’ll never get done (there’s hours and hours of my music). But, I made the mistake of listening to this one. Couldn’t resist throwing this video together. I dressed up like this a number of years back to play the organ for a Halloween concert at the Palladium (I don’t even know if that organ there still exists). #halloween #pipeorgan #music