Category: Music Composition

3 Preludes on St Anne for solo piano plus for organ with brass descants

Mov. 1 — Prelude

Mov. 2 — Offertory

Mov. 3 — Postlude

All three were composed during the height of the pandemic. The video of Mov. 2 was recorded at that time. The videos of Mov. 1 and Mov. 3 were recorded recently. The video below with the organ and brass descants was also composed and recorded during the pandemic as part of online services during lockdown.

The hymn tune on which the above three preludes are based is called St. Anne. Hymn tunes have names which aren’t necessarily related to the words, since hymnals in the old days only gave the words. Hymn texts were sung to any tune that had a metrical scheme that fit the text.

St. Anne is most commonly associated these days with the words to O God, Our Help in Ages Past, by the hymnodist Issac Watts. The tune, St. Anne, was written by William Croft (1677-1727) when Croft was organist at St Anne’s Church in Soho. Croft’s musical mentor was John Blow.

Even people who are church goers aren’t often familiar with classical hymn tunes unless they’re members of a denomination which retains that tradition. Even if they do maintain the classical hymn tune tradition, many churches don’t even have hymnals anymore, using only projections . That’s why I’ve include the following video. Hopefully, you’ll hear ghosts of the hymn tune in my three preludes based on it.

If you’re afflicted with the music theory virus, and have to “figure things out” in the realm of words and ideas (instead of sound), the tune in the postlude (mov. 3) is in the left hand of the pianissimo passages. (I’ll let you figure out what’s happening in the forte passages on your own.)

In the Offertory (mov. 2), in the first half, the tune is in the thumb of the left hand; in the second half, it’s in the pinkie finger of the right hand.

In the prelude (mov. 1)…damned if I know where it is, but I can feel it’s there somewhere!

Sheet Music available at the following links

Complete (best deal)
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1084639/Product.aspx
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/3-preludes-on-st-anne-o-god-our-help-in-ages-past-for-solo-piano-digital-sheet-music/21972220

mov 1
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1084641/Product.aspx
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/3-preludes-on-st-anne-mov-1-prelude-digital-sheet-music/21981075

mov 2
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1084642/Product.aspx
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/3-preludes-on-st-anne-mov-2-offertory-digital-sheet-music/21981077

mov 3
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1084643/Product.aspx
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/3-preludes-on-st-anne-mov-3-postlude-digital-sheet-music/21981078

A “legit” piano sonata

I’m in the final month of my tenure as music director at the Lakewood UnitedaChurch of Christ, the best church job I’ve ever had, the one most in alignment with my personal values and beliefs (although mine are decidedly more metaphysical than traditional). I’ve been there so long I can’t even remember how long. I know it’s more than 15 years.

But now, as one by one, my different career roles (first the university, then the commercial music director, and now church musician) have given way to a single focus, I’ll be spending my creative efforts on just my music composition (and related activites, such as self-publishing, making videos, and finding appropriate intimate venues to play some of my music live).

That last related activity means practicing to play what amounts to recitals again. Playing recitals isn’t a walk in the park; it’s hard work. As part of that, I’m practicing, practicing, practicing! My endurance is improving.

If you think you have the endurance to listen to all four movements in a row of this new piano sonata, A Random Day, here’s the four different movement videos stitched together into one video.

If not, I definitely understand! (When practicing all four in a row I grow weary myself.) If all you have time for is just the new movement, here it is (movement #3, Conversing with Trees and Their Friends While Walking at First Light). I’ve posted movements 1, 2, and 4 before.

Within a week, the sheet music will be available at sheetmusicdirect and sheetmusicplus for the seperate individual movements or, if desired, for all four as the complete piece (all four movements). I’ll add those links to this post when available.

In case you’re curious what the titles are about, they’re all about not particularly profound common occurrences/memories that might occur in any random day that, although mundane events, sometimes lead to mystical experiences almost as if my accident.

Sitting in One Kitchen Amid Echoes of Others

This is the final movement of a short, 4-movement piece, entitled A Random Day, that starts with The Little Room Under the Stairs followed by A Memory Discovered in the Pocket of a Coat Long Unworn. There’ll be one more movement between Coat Long Unworn and this piece, Sitting in One Kitchen Amid Echoes of Others.

A Random Day along with two other short multiple movement pieces are intended for another BandCamp digital album that I’ll discuss in a later post.

I’ve sat in so many kitchens. Seemingly countless others. It’s the heart of any home.

A Memory Discovered in the Pocket of a Coat Long Unworn

As an undergraduate at the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music, my composition teacher was Stanworth Beckler. I learned so much from him. As with all real learning it’s not the information that’s presented in lessons and lectures, it’s the off-hand comment, almost in passing that sticks with you and guides and comforts you decades later. Several of his stick with me to this day.

Beckler taught a course one semester that was the result of his own in-depth study and analysis of ALL of the compositions of Igor Stravinsky. What a course! For the longest time I carefully kept his handouts. But…life. I no longer have them. If there’s any Beckler students out there who have those notes I will happily pay for their duplication and postage. They’re priceless.

Anyway…After listening to the complete works of Stravinsky over a semester and hearing Beckler’s analyses, one day I had the distinct impression that Stravinsky’s oeuvre is his own self-instruction in how to write music. That may seem like a peculiar observation for someone who wrote The Rite of Spring; he knew how to write music! But, alas, you have to learn all over again, every piece, no matter how long you’ve been doing it, ever since we entered the non-common-practice period (pretty much post Wagner to the present day).

I too am still trying to figure out how to compose and each piece I try to chip away at a new skill a little bit. (No, I won’t tell which skill it is for this piece.)

Ancient history…

In 1969, I became the first composition teacher at USF (also teaching theory courses and comp related courses such as orchestration). I created USF’s electronic music studio. Before, at Eastman, I had been the 1st graduate assistant assigned to build Eastman’s electronic music studio under my major professor and director of the studio, Wayne Barlow. Back in those olden days, my parent’s day (Leon Theremin, Tod Dockstader, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse) and then, in my day (Morton Subotnick, Wendy Carlos and others post the advent of synthesizers), it was all called “electronic music.”

Quite aside from the fact that all my current recordings use only sampled sounds, I would not consider it electronic music in the aforementioned sense. Mainly because I only use electronic sounds in lieu of acoustic instruments. I’m really writing for acoustic instruments that I can’t afford to record, so I use samples which I can.

I haven’t written any real electronic music since way back in the last century, about 1993. I’m trying to organize all the stuff I’ve written over the past years, and I keep uncovering things I’ve forgotten.

This post shares a digital album of “electronica” (see further discussion of terminology further down the post) I’d forgotten I’d done: Tales of the Laughing Wizards. That link will take you to BandCamp where you can listen to the tracks a few times free of charge. Also, I’ve given the links to the separate tracks below.

  1. Iliru
  2. Seusur
  3. Janarnkarr
  4. Calulaith
  5. Gahnende
  6. Homuro
  7. M’urneng
  8. Alrareven
  9. Lorserathathgha

Above, I referred to Tales of the Laughing Wizards as “electronica.” These days of precise music marketing terms (which is such a bother), the term “electronic music” has come to mean club music: music you can dance to. Another term, “electronica” has come to mean music produced by electronic means that is not intended as dance music. It’s music to be listened to (ambient, theatrical, contemplative, melodic, music for listening to, etc.). So, Tales of the Laughing Wizards is electronica.

Reblog of my sister’s Father’s Day post!

The Little Room Under the Stairs

We lived in an old, rambling two-storied* parsonage (my father was a Methodist minister) and we lived in the house owned by the church. I was in the first year or two of elementary school. Our house was big enough that there were front stairs descending into the hallway just inside the mudroom and stairs in the back emptying directly from my bedroom (!), down into the kitchen and continuing directly on down into the the basement (but that’s another story ).

Underneath of the angle of the front stairs was a triangular shaped little room with its own little triangular door.

I don’t remember if I ever actually ever even entered that room, or if I simply wanted to and fantasized about doing so. Memory is a very malleable thing. My emotional association with that room was not at all like the frightening little room under the stairs that Harry Potter was confined to. For me, the association with our little room under the stairs is warmth, comfort, books, a place to be away from the world and close the door behind me, a place all my own…emotional privacy.

I suspect that’s a false memory, built entirely of wishful fantasy.

Here’s a picture of me on the front porch of that old house, at that exact age, 8. You can probably intuit all there is to know about me just from that photo!

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

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.

Pete Seeger arrangements

You’ve heard me mention the Hal Leonard website, ArrangeMe.com. I’ve been looking at my sales over the past 3 years and most of my sales have been my piano arrangements of folk music. These two arrangements are part of an desire to expand my trend into choral music. It’s the first time I’ve ever take advantage of the 6+million tunes Hal Leonard owns the rights to.

I picked these two tunes because their folk flavor, but mainly because Pete Seeger is an important part of the social justice conscience of America and America needs that message more than ever.

Both these tunes are arranged for SAB which makes them suitable for a public school choir. Even though Turn, Turn, Turn is based on Ecclesiastes, it’s still appropriate for a secular context. I’m fortunate that the church where I’m music director (Lakewood UCC) appreciates the spiritual messages reflected in many secular songs. The Lakewood choir has sung both these arrangements in services.

The sheet music for these two arrangements are available at…

Turn, Turn, Turn
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1967706/Product.aspx or
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/turn-turn-turn-to-everything-there-is-a-season-23686290.html

Oh, Had I a Golden Thread
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1967717/Product.aspx or
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/oh-had-i-a-golden-thread-23686233.html

I’m You can listen to demos of the songs at all those links as well as peruse the scores, entirely free. And if you want to perform them with your choir, you can download them right there!