Category: Church

Feed Us, Lord

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)

Choir Church Contests Finale demo

Deeper than the Sea

I wrote this setting of Psalm 36:5-9 for the CRC sesquicentennial hymn contest. I lost. But then the Psalm came up in the lectionary, so I decided to create an arrangement for choir, piano and congregation that we’ll use January 14 at Church of the Servant. Chords are included so it can be accompanied by guitar and bass to get that “folk choir” kind of sound.

Here is the score: (I had to remove it–it’s now published by GIA)

Don’t have a choir? Don’t despair! Here’s the leadsheet for praise band: (pdf-praise)

And a rough demo in a somewhat Chris Tomlin style: (mp3-praise)

Church Live

The Babe of Bethlehem

When I worked at Wildwood Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee, Florida, we had an annual “Festival of Carols” service during Advent. (Can I really call something “annual” when it only happened twice?) Basically, this was a lessons and carols service, but I knew that would sound too high church, so I called it a “Festival of Carols.” In any case, in 1999 the theme of the service was “An American Christmas.” It featured Christmas songs from Canada to New Mexico, with lots in between.

The first song of the evening came from the shape-note (Sacred Harp) singing tradition. Instead of singing it in shape-note style, though, we performed it with solo voice (me), mandolin (me) and guitar (Mike Houghton). This isn’t a particularly good performance–I botch a note in the first few measures–but it’s a great song. In fact, I like the song so much that I used it again this year at Church of the Servant’s lessons and carols service. This time we sang it in proper shape-note style, with bright chest voice and men and women doubling the soprano and tenor lines. But I don’t have a recording of that.

Without further ado, here is “The Babe of Bethlehem.”