The Musical Diary of Greg Scheer

It’s always a mystery to me: who is visiting my website or subscribing to my blog? which songs are they using? where are the songs traveling? YouTube has answered some of these questions, and raised others.

I found out that my song “Prairie Prelude” (MP3, PDF) is used as the soundtrack to a video of a church retreat in Baguio City, Philippines. I guess it’s not entirely surprising that a church in the Philippines is singing my music. After all, it is called the world wide web, and over the years I’ve had communications with people from just about every continent. What seems more unusual is that they chose this particular song. “Prairie Prelude” hasn’t ever been published, has only a one-take-one-mic demo to accompany it, and I’ve never even used it in a worship service. I think it’s a good song that would really shine with the right treatment (Steve Bell, are you listening?) but that time hasn’t come yet. So it just seems odd that someone from the Philippines scrolled through the 50 songs at my congregational song page and was drawn in particular to “Prairie Prelude.” Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic. Just mysteriously fantastic. Maybe Arielle Hipe who sang the song on the video can help clear up the mystery.

But enough chatter. Here’s the video:

On Sunday night Rebecca Jordan Heys preached on the parable of the ten bridesmaids and asked me to conclude the sermon by leading the spiritual “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning.” Like many people, I know the song from the popular choral arrangement by Andre Thomas, but it has traveled far and wide, as you can hear in this YouTube video by Blind Willie Johnson and this one by Hot Tuna. In any case, on Friday afternoon as I played around with the song and tried to figure out how best to lead it, I began laying down some tracks in Logic Pro and came up with this little demo.

There’s a great song in Sing! A New Creation called “Toda la tierra/All Earth Is Waiting.” (The first phrase in Spanish produces the wonderfully silly sound-alike in English: Toads in Tiaras.) I use it a few times each Advent, but it always feels a little incomplete–like it needs something to soften the somewhat abrupt ending of each verse. So last year I vowed I would write a little refrain for the song to use this year in Advent. It’s just a four bar phrase with a turn around, but it gives the song a chance to breathe. As my composition teacher used to say, “compositions are like buildings–they need doors and windows.” I also wrote a different piano arrangement. Here’s the demo MP3, and below is a picture of the refrain.

My friend Paul Ryan asked me to lead one of the “Sing a New Song” chapels at Calvin College this Fall. I had originally thought I’d introduce one of the songs from the “Global Songs for Worship” collection I’m editing, but as the date got closer I decided to teach my song based on Psalm 127–”Rest in the Lord, My Soul.” This decision wasn’t based (solely) on shameless self-promotion. It’s just that I realized it would be a good opportunity to lead a group of non-musicians through the process of transplanting a Psalm into a particular musical context. In the allotted 25 minutes we talked about the themes and difficulties of the original text, Michael Morgan’s metrical version of the Psalm, and my musical setting of Morgan’s text.

Don’t believe me? Then watch the video! Go to the Calvin Chapel web page, then choose the November 9, 2009 chapel in the scroll bar on the right. At about 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the video I begin my talk.

As we enter that blessed season known to music ministers as “when will this ever end?” I find myself considering a Magnificat that is near and dear to my heart. I wrote “My Soul Will Magnify the Lord” while I was at Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. It’s part of a series of pieces based on the wonderful canticles found in Luke. The ingredients are choir, rhythm section, brass and soloist, all boiled up in a pop/rock/classical/jazz stew. And they’re all blazingly difficult to pull off well. (I’d get published a lot more if I could tame my muse.)

One of the most unusual features of this particular Magnificat is that it ends with the genealogy found in Luke 3. Crazy, you say? Like a fox, I say. No, really, it is strangely powerful to hear Mary sing about God’s mercy extending from generation to generation, and then hear their names sung one after another. One choir member at the time thought the idea was so unique that I should patent it.\

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good recording from the Bellefield performance, so all I can share with you as the “choir of Greg” version.  You can see the music here. I might include it in this year’s Lessons & Carols service on December 13 at 6pm at Church of the Servant, so if you’re in the Grand Rapids area you should plan to join us.