Month: December 2009

Categories
Church Demos

A Mark of Grace

At this year’s Calvin Worship Symposium, I’m planning music for a service that uses the story of Cain and Abel as the sermon scripture. As you can imagine there are a TON of congregational songs about that one…

Neal Plantinga is preaching, and described his sermon as exploring the mark of Cain as punishment and protection. Cain’s “mark of grace” is a foreshadowing of Christ on the cross–the ultimate punishment that leads to the greatest blessing. Though I found a few hymns that got in the ballpark of the sermon theme (“God of Grace and God of Glory” and “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven”), I decided I’d give a go at writing one especially for the occasion.

The result is the appropriately titled “A Mark of Grace.” Check out the PDF score and Finalified MP3. This is still a working draft, but I decided to post it to my music blog so I wouldn’t ruin my Christmas thinking about it. This has been one of the more difficult things I’ve written in a while. In the first draft, the lyrics got the point across, but were too informational. That is, I fit in all the right words, but singing a list of characters from Genesis is not particularly inspirational. Plus, my verses were too long, so it felt tiresome.* In my second draft, I struck upon the idea of taking the original 16 line verses and trimming them to 8 lines of verse and 4 lines of pre-chorus. The pre-chorus provided a musical ramp between the verse and chorus that felt just right. But still, the rhyme scheme was so tight and the theological ideas so expansive that I had very little wiggle room with the lyrics. By draft #3 (this one) I felt like things had started to settle in lyrically and musically, though I’m thinking seriously of changing to 4/4 time throughout the whole song.

I think it’s best that I sit on it for a few days to see how it feels with a little distance. Feel free to give me feedback.

* But I kind of liked this section of the first draft:
Like Adam in the garden
Like Eve eating the fruit
Our family tree grows crooked
It’s poisoned at the root.

Categories
Choir Church

My Soul at COS L&C

Sunday evening was Church of the Servant’s Lessons & Carols service. As always, it was the highlight of Advent and Christmas for me. The highlight for me from a compositional standpoint, was that after 12 years I finally got a good recording of “My Soul Will Magnify the Lord.” Take a listen and you’ll figure out why it hasn’t been performed or published much. It’s hard.

Also included were my arrangements of “On Jordan’s Banks (PUER NOBIS),” “All Earth Is Waiting,” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Check them out at http://www.churchoftheservantcrc.org/2009-lessons-carols.

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Uncategorized

Go Tell It on the Mountain: strings, brass, and piano

Update: Sheet music for this arrangement is now available at gregscheer.com.

I’ve got lots to do for Sunday’s Lessons & Carols service at Church of the Servant (6pm, if you’re interested), but true to form I feel the compulsion to add one more thing to my to do list: write a last minute arrangement. Here’s a simple arrangement of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” for strings, brass and piano. Nothing too fancy, but if you’re using the song in one of your Christmas services and you happen to have brass, strings and rhythm section available, this should do the trick. Listen to the MP3.

Categories
Church

Savior of the Nations, Come

The great Advent hymn “Savior of the Nations, Come” has been on my mind a lot this week, no doubt in part because of Bruce Benedict’s excellent rendition. As I planned for next week’s service, I knew the Joyful Noise Orchestra would sound great playing it. I wanted to give the more experienced players a little something to sink their teeth into, so I channeled Bach (Bach on a very bad day, that is) and came up with a short fugal introduction for the hymn. Check out the PDF or MP3.