I feel bad that I haven’t updated my blog in over a week. On the other hand, my last post was the day before Palm Sunday, and you can’t really blame a church musician for blogging less during Holy Week. Though I’m not working on any big projects, my production hasn’t completely stalled. Over the next few days I’ll post some odds and ends from the last week. Here’s the first:
String arrangement of Michael Joncas’ Psalm 118/This Is the Day. (MP3)
Every Easter the lectionary calls for Psalm 118 as the Psalm of the day. As always, I try to find just the right setting for the musicians I have. In the past I’ve done Psalm 118s by Taize (this year’s plan B), Patrick Geary (exciting, but I’ve done it too much recently), Lawler/Guiao (needs 2 trumpets; I had strings), and me (too hard). I came across Joncas’ bouncy “This Is the Day” and decided to give it a try. Since I had string ensemble available, I wrote a quick arrangement that had a number of options I could use on the fly. During the Easter rehearsal, we decided that recorder melody against pizzacato string accompaniment would make a great intro. The strings come back again on each congregational refrain with descant.
