Pleasant and singable, or just a really nice personality? You be the beholder: MP3, PDF.

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

Of course, you know how I am about composition contests. You’ll remember that in the calm before the storm of this year’s Calvin Worship Symposium, I completed a Robot Dance Music contest entry (I won) and started a mass. I made enough progress on the mass before the symposium started that I was able to complete it during the event. This was helped along by my friend Kelly at GIA who was gracious enough to give me excellent feedback from her symposium vendor’s booth, and by Jeremy Begbie, who was kind enough to overlook that guy in the back who was editing a mass while he gave a lecture.

Fast forward a few months. I lost the NPM contest, which is not entirely unexpected. But I can’t just let 13 pages of music languish because of something as benign as losing a contest. So I did what any reasonable person would do–I asked for a second opinion in the form of YouTube. That’s right. I’ve published a “bouncing ball” version of the mass on YouTube so you can sing along while watching the music scroll by.

I named this setting “A Humble Mass” not because I think it’s a cool name like… I don’t know–Missa Lunesta or Mass of the Proletariat–but because I just couldn’t find a great name. I wanted to convey that this is a simple mass that is quite usable in congregations that only have a keyboard available to them. And it’s quite singable, with a few themes tying the whole mass together. But you never really know how effective a piece is until it’s sung by a living, breathing congregation.

If any of you would like to give this mass a go in your congregation, let me know and I’ll get you a PDF file of the mass.