• songs from a Christian perspective, but necessarily only for Christian audiences
• themes that dealt with the weightier issues of life and faith
• mature perspective (i.e. teeny bopper songs wouldn’t fit this group of women)
• something their multivocal group could sink their teeth into

I don’t know that I ever heard back from them. (You wouldn’t believe how many people request songs and then don’t even respond to your submission. At least have the decency to acknowledge that you received the submission; preferably you should take the time to let them know why their song didn’t fit the project. But no, I’m not bitter.)

I came across this demo the other day and gave it another listen. I’ll be up front and say that the demo is cheesy. Fair enough. But I still kind of like the song itself. It’s written from the perspective of a person who is at an undisclosed juncture (illness? midlife crisis? failed relationship?) and is praying one of those nothing-to-lose honest prayers of doubt and faith that mark such crossroads.

I know this kind of straight up CCM pop is not everyone’s cup of tea, but expand your hipster horizons and give it a listen: Carry Me, MP3.

VERSE 1
The days are filled with coffee,
and the nights last for days.
You never know where your life is going
But I didn’t think it would be this way.

How could I have seen it coming?
What could I have done to prepare?
Of all the places I thought I’d end up
it would be anywhere but here.

CHORUS
If Your love moves mountains,
and Your love soothes seas,
then I need Your love to reach down
and move and soothe my soul. I need your love
to carry me.

VERSE 2
Who am I to question?
I’m in no place to make demands.
But you’ve led me into this wilderness
and I’m trying to understand:

Should I see hope on the horizon?
Should I find comfort in the past?
Right now I’m in between
and I don’t know how long it will last.

CHORUS

BRIDGE
Your love has brought me here today,
to a place where I can’t see my way.
O Lord, there’s nothing I can do
if Your love doesn’t carry me through.

VERSE 3
Nothing in this world is forever.
It burns like dew in the morning sun.
But longer than the earth will spin
Your love goes on and on.

CHORUS

Strange angels in the sky
interrupt this lonely night
singing peace on earth
but what’s that worth
when they sing it from the sky?

No angel will never know
what it’s like living below
they sing of birth
but that just means more hurt
as another woman cries

Born under a silent star
Live under a silent star
Die under a silent star,
a million miles away.

2,000 years passed since that night
and the only light that fills the sky
are rockets red glare
and bombs bursting in air
under the gaze of satellite
above this maze with restless eye.

Born under a silent star
Live under a silent star
Die under a silent star,
a million miles away.
A silent star, while all the angels sing:

Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis Deo.

Alexandra wrote this text to the tune LASST UNS ERFREUEN (“All Creatures of Our God and King,” etc). This is a perfectly good choice. It is a tune that the Church has sung and cherished for many years–388 to be exact–but somehow I don’t feel the weight of history like perhaps I should.

I wrote a new one: MP3.

As I searched hymnary.org, I found a good text by Isaac Watts called “Arise, O King of Grace, Arise,” that teases out Christological imagery from the Psalm in a way that only Watts can do. I valiantly tried to finish setting music to it by rehearsal time, but I was thwarted by making copies, unlocking doors and other mundane tasks.

But today I completed the song, and I want to make sure the good folks of the Guitarchestra have a chance to familiarize themselves with it before the next rehearsal. So here’s the PDF and the MP3. So put down your turkey and get practicing! (People who aren’t Gstra members are also welcome to try it out.)

According to an article in Reformed Worship, Dunstan wrote the text with the 10.10.10.10 tune  SLANE (“Be Thou My Vision”) in mind. The editors of Reformed Worship, who are also the editors of Faith Alive’s new hymnal, feel that SLANE’s positive associations will be in tension with the grim subject matter of the text. In the RW article they suggested using SLANE in a minor key arrangement.

I stayed pretty close to SLANE in my new tune. It’s in C minor, which is the relative minor key to SLANE’s Eb major. It has four phrases in 3/4 time that unfold similarly to SLANE. It’s mostly pentatonic, which is what gives SLANE its folk flavor. The main difference is that I never let my melody peak on the high Eb in the third phrase. This might sound like a small deal, but pentatonic melodies are all about the shape of the line. Letting a melody slowly blossom to the highest note of the scale is a way of really making a melody soar. (Keith Getty, I know what you’re doing.) I decided that for a text of this nature, never quite reaching the melodic goal would convey the brokenness of the subject matter. It’s a subtle touch, but I think it works.

You be the judge: MP3, PDF

I like that the tune is more or less modal, yet keeps sliding out of the mode’s center. (You can cast your vote in the comment section as to what key you think the song is in.) What holds things together are the strong sequences that follow a subtle inner logic. They guide your voice to the next pitch even when you don’t understand why. Listen or look and let me know what you think.

Calling all composers, Work continues on the upcoming hymnal Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs to be published by Faith Alive Christian Resources in 2013.  As we finish making our selections we noted a couple of texts that we would like to find new tunes for.

The first text listed is “As In that Upper Room You Left Your Seat” by Timothy Dudley-Smith. The meter is 10.10.10.10, which makes the poetic lines long enough that the syllabic stress can be all over the place. The trick is to write music that is fluid enough to accomodate changes in text stress between verses, but not so much that things turn to mush. So I wrote a melody that focuses on the arc of each phrase, and doesn’t worry too much about meter. In fact, I don’t show any time signatures and I’m thinking very seriously about taking out the bar lines.

Take a look (PDF) or listen (MP3), then give the folks at Faith Alive a call and tell them that their hymnal will be nothing without this tune. But still, I fully expect it to be rejected.

This is a demo of the University of Pittsburgh Jazz Band playing “Budapest.” The song comes from a set of songs called the European Suite, which I wrote after returning from a year in Salzburg and vicinity in 1989. The following year I scored the movement “Budapest” for a jazz arranging class.

I would be entirely willing to score the entire set of songs for jazz band. (Yes, jazz band directors, that’s a hint.) Until that time, you’ll need to satisfy your European cravings with this aural bon bon: Budapest MP3.

The thing I like about this song is that it stretches the boundaries of song form. It goes all over the place, but never loses its way. The problem is that it is an absolute bear to play. The poor cello and viola fill in for bass and guitar, with rhythmic double stops that form the backbone of the groove. The violins have solos and fiddle rhythms. And then everyone has to stop on a dime and nail delicate harmonics. It’s a wonder they didn’t walk out on me when I passed out the music!

Take a listen to a work in progress: Palestrina, MP3.

PS – If you’re wondering why I keep composing given the fact that I’m dwarfed by people like Palestrina, it is best summarized by Henry van Dyke: “The woods would be very silent if no bird sang except the best.”

I received my compositional indoctrination during the day, and played my guitar around town at night. In fact, this was when I first began writing music for guitar and string quartet, trying to find ways of composing music that were artful but also accessible. During these years of musical tension, I often wrote songs that explored the questions that kept turning in my mind. And the question in this case was, “Have I Gone Too Far?“