The Musical Diary of Greg ScheerUpdate 12/18/21: Sheet music for this arrangement is now available at gregscheer.com.
I’m proud to be included on the latest Cardiphonia compilation. This time around the the theme was “shape note” hymns in new arrangements. If you’re not familiar with the shape note singing tradition, do yourself a favor and watch the documentary Awake, My Soul, or visit The Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association. Until then, listen to The Hollow Square Hymnal.
No one tells me anything. I just stumbled across a recording of my anthem Abana at the GIA website.
The Church of the Servant choir is singing movements of Vivaldi’s Gloria throughout the year. Recently we sang “Dominus Deus, Agnus Dei” (“Lord God, Lamb of God…that takes away the sins of the world have mercy upon us”) during the confession.
Many of these movements can be found in public domain editions, but others have incomplete resources. Such was the case with this movement. There were plenty of choral scores, but no realization of the figured bass that was light enough to leave room for the cello. (You’ll remember that in a lot of Baroque music the continuo was a bass line with chord symbols called figured bass. The Baroque keyboardist was expected to improvise chords above the bass line. Today, few players have this skill.)
You would think that filling in chords above a bass line would be a simple task tapping into skills learned in freshman theory, but it’s actually surprisingly hard to get into the stylistic mindset of another composer and flesh out their music in a convincing way. You can assess my success here: PDF. Of course, compositional success can only be achieved when implemented by actual musicians. In this case, I had the best: Erin De Young sang the solo and Andrew Plaisier played cello. I’m blessed to be at a church with people like this!
In 1971, Priscilla Wright wrote a song based on the prophesies of Joel. It was a scripture song like many of its era, with verses that quote a biblical passage verbatim and a music style that mimics Jewish folk song. We ended up singing it on a Joyful Noise Sunday, so I wrote a quick little arrangement for strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion. Email me if you need a score.
Update 1/10/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I’ve been using this arrangement forever, but for some reason have never posted it to my blog. PUER NOBIS is one of the great hymn tunes of the Church and is matched with many texts, including “O Splendor of God’s Glory Bright.” I tried to bring out its folk song flavor with a piano accompaniment that is energetic. As one pianist put it, “I’ll send you the bill for the physical therapist.” Keyboardist complaints aside, I feel like this arrangement brings out the sprightly nature of this tune in a way that often gets lost in the four-part hymnal.
Update 1/11/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
A few years ago a woman in the church told me she’d love to sing a Christmas carol she remembered fondly from her childhood in Germany. Being a German speaker I was more than happy to oblige. However, I couldn’t find a translation that was completely satisfying or an arrangement that fit my church’s musicians.
It’s no wonder. The original German text is 15 verses long, and the musical arrangements span from Bach to German a cappella boy bands. This Fall I finally got serious about the song and dove headfirst into it with the goal of completing a new translation and arrangement for our Lessons & Carols service. It was insanely difficult to translate. The German rhyme scheme is extremely tight, leaving little flexibility. The melody plays itself over and over in your brain, but doesn’t behave like a “normal” melody. All in all it was one of the more difficult projects I’ve taken on in a long time.
Above is the recording from Church of the Servant’s 2015 Lessons & Carols service. Below is my translation of the four German verses I focused on.
1. Before your manger, here I stand;
dear Jesus, my life’s treasure.
A humble gift is all I have;
I pray it gives you pleasure.
O take my heart, my mind, my soul,
and take my life, I offer all
back to the One who gave it.
2. For even in my mother’s womb,
dear Jesus, you were calling.
You loved me long before I could
bow down to you, adoring.
Before I ever walked this earth,
you planned for me a second birth,
to win my love forever.
3. I gaze on you with joy and love;
I’m filled with adoration.
No song of praise could be enough
to voice my jubilation.
O that my heart, my soul could be
e’en deeper, wider than the sea,
to hold your love o’erflowing!
4. One thing I ask of you, my Lord,
dear Jesus, hear my prayer:
that you would make a humble home
within my heart forever.
O come to me and stay with me.
O let my heart your cradle be.
Fill me with joy unending.
1. Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier,
o Jesu, du mein Leben;
ich komme, bring und schenke dir,
was du mir hast gegeben.
Nimm hin, es ist mein Geist und Sinn,
Herz, Seel und Mut, nimm alles hin
und laß dir’s wohlgefallen.
2. Da ich noch nicht geboren war,
da bist du mir geboren
und hast mich dir zu eigen gar,
eh ich dich kannt, erkoren.
Eh ich durch deine Hand gemacht,
da hast du schon bei dir bedacht,
wie du mein wolltest werden.
3. Ich sehe dich mit Freuden an
und kann mich nicht satt sehen;
und weil ich nun nichts weiter kann,
bleib ich anbetend stehen.
O daß mein Sinn ein Abgrund wär
und meine Seel ein weites Meer,
daß ich dich möchte fassen!
4. Eins aber, hoff ich, wirst du mir,
mein Heiland, nicht versagen:
daß ich dich möge für und für
in, bei und an mir tragen.
So laß mich doch dein Kripplein sein;
komm, komm und lege bei mir ein
dich und all deine Freuden.
Update 1/15/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I first heard “Ready My Heart” on Steve Bell’s CD Each Rare Moment over a decade ago. It’s been an integral part of my church’s Advent ever since. It is a unique Advent song, a devotional text in which we pray that our hearts would be prepared to cradle the coming Savior.
It was written by Lois Shuford in the late 70s. I’m not sure how Steve Bell found it, but it certainly wasn’t due to a promotional campaign on Shuford’s part–in email correspondence a while back, she just seemed pleased and maybe a little surprised that the song had taken on a life of its own.
Head over to gregscheer.com for resources for using “Ready My Heart” in your church. Shuford is not registered with CCLI and seems pleased to have churches sing the song as long as they attribute the song to her. If that changes, I’ll update the information here.
Just a quick post from yesterday’s service, featuring the inimitable Joyful Noise Orchestra. If you are not familiar with JNO, it’s an ensemble (collective? flash mob? uprising?) of musicians that span from age 12 to 72, from beginner to pro. We lead worship every few months at Church of the Servant, and when we do I try to write something special to show them off. This time it was a contrapuntal introduction to the hymn tune DARWALL, which you may know as “Rejoice the Lord Is King.” (We sang it with the text “Join All the Glorious Names.”) If you want to verify that we were mostly playing the right notes, you can take a look at the score: PDF. If you want to verify that JNO is the best looking band in the business, check out this picture from Thanksgiving 2014.
Update 3/12/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
My final post from the 9/13/15 COS service is an oldie but goodie, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” A while back I wrote a “Haydnesque” string intro that proved to be a headache for many of our string players. But on this particular Sunday, the string quartet was made up of talented and eager college students, so I made them work a bit! (This is not to say that COS’s other string players are not talented, just not quite as eager.)
In my work on Global Songs for Worship I wrote a lot of arrangements. A. Lot.
I’m a constant musical tinkerer, so I often take a previous idea and build on it, depending on what musicians I have available. On 9/13/15 at COS I had a fine string quartet, so I dug deep into my string archives and pulled out this little string arrangement of the Filipino song, “Father in Heaven.” It’s a lovely song that follows a Trinitarian pattern. Why don’t more people sing this song? Why?