People do all sorts of things with their free time. Some play sudoku, some watch the Weather Channel; me, I enter song contests. My latest challenge has been to compose music for a college fight song and alma mater. The prize is $1500. ($1000 for the fight song and $500 for the alma mater.) Some people might see this as wasting time. Me, I see it as money in the bank.
Once again, I’ve turned to Michael Morgan’s 1999 Psalter for Christian Worship as the starting point for a new Psalm setting, this time Psalm 30. I like the way Morgan places the joyous sentiments of the Psalm text in the first half of each verse, and the lament and supplication in the second half. That allows the musical setting to reinforce the meaning of the text in each verse.
Morgan recommends the tune ABBOT’S LEIGH (”God Is Here”) for the text. That’s a beautiful tune, but I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. I wrote a draft of a new tune one afternoon last week, obsessed about it the rest of the evening, revised it the next morning, got some helpful feedback from my friend David that afternoon, then finished it by dinner time.
We’ll sing it at COS as the lectionary Psalm this Sunday. In the meantime, you can download a PDF file of the music or listen to a cheesy Finalefied MP3.
I just returned from 2 weeks in Uganda. To assuage your eager ears while I catch up with things, here are two songs I wrote with Colin Gordon-Farleigh before I left. The first is “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking” (PDF, MP3), a 1920s-style romp of a song. The second is a ballad called “Colours” (PDF, MP3).
The songwriting collaboration between Colin and me continues to go well. A while back he sent me his first non-worship lyric–a love song. I thought it would be appropriate to compose music for it on Valentine’s Day. Take a look: When I’m with You, pdf or a listen: When I’m with You, mp3
Brand-spanking new (as of 2 mintues ago), here’s a communion anthem for SATB choir and piano. As usual, I have virtually guaranteed that it won’t be published by composing a simple anthem with an unusually difficult piano part.
There’s a story about Beethoven in which he turns to a violinist who is complaining about some fingerings and he says, “Do you think I worry about fingering when the muse strikes me?” I wouldn’t go that far, but I think there’s certainly some room to challenge the church pianist a bit. Let me know if I’m being unreasonably cruel to the pianist in this piece. Come to think of it, we’re doing this song at COS on February 11, so I’ll let you know if I have a pianist mutiny.
Feed Us, Lord (pdf)
Feed Us, Lord (mp3)
Easter isn’t all that far off. Here’s a new (as of 5 minutes ago) song co-written by Colin Gordon-Farleigh:
Bells Are Ringing! (pdf)
In October I got an email from out of the blue from a minister in the UK who was interested in having me set some of his hymns to music. Colin Gordon-Farleigh and I have been collaborating ever since. Today I finished our 10th song. It’s called “Let’s Stand Together.” Colin has given me permission to post our songs here at my music blog, so I thought I’d go ahead and start with the newest one. As usual, you have your choice: listen to the mp3 of the cheesy Finale playback, or print it out and play it yourself.