The Musical Diary of Greg ScheerScheer Doxology
A long time ago–1992 to be exact–I wrote a new setting of Thomas Ken’s Doxology. It was part of The Belliefield Liturgy, five songs for two-part choir that fit Bellefield Presbyterian’s (Pittsburgh) worship service. COS’s Guitarchestra is going to use this song in the near future, so I thought I’d revise it and make the piano accompaniment available to you, my loyal readers.
Finalified MP3, Greg and guitar MP3, Voice/Piano PDF, SATB/Piano PDF
I feel bad that I haven’t updated my blog in over a week. On the other hand, my last post was the day before Palm Sunday, and you can’t really blame a church musician for blogging less during Holy Week. Though I’m not working on any big projects, my production hasn’t completely stalled. Over the next few days I’ll post some odds and ends from the last week. Here’s the first:
String arrangement of Michael Joncas’ Psalm 118/This Is the Day. (MP3)
Every Easter the lectionary calls for Psalm 118 as the Psalm of the day. As always, I try to find just the right setting for the musicians I have. In the past I’ve done Psalm 118s by Taize (this year’s plan B), Patrick Geary (exciting, but I’ve done it too much recently), Lawler/Guiao (needs 2 trumpets; I had strings), and me (too hard). I came across Joncas’ bouncy “This Is the Day” and decided to give it a try. Since I had string ensemble available, I wrote a quick arrangement that had a number of options I could use on the fly. During the Easter rehearsal, we decided that recorder melody against pizzacato string accompaniment would make a great intro. The strings come back again on each congregational refrain with descant.
In a previous post, I tantalized you with the premiere date of The God of Abraham Praise. That date has come and gone, and now I’m pleased to present you with a recording from the event. Without further ado, I give you the Calvin College Orchestra playing The God of Abraham Praise.
I’ve written before about my love of the hymn What Wondrous Love Is This. That previous post included a stripped down recording of me singing the song, accompanied by guitar. This time I’m posting a more complex arrangement for piano. We used it last Sunday at COS as an accompaniment for congregational singing. After seeing how hard my pianist had to work (and hearing how sick of hearing it his wife became) and experiencing the difficulty the congregation had finding their note into the last verse, I think I may recast this as an instrumental anthem for piano and treble instrument. But I’ll let you be the judge. The piano is quite light in the recording, so you may want to look at the PDF while listening to the MP3.
Update: For sheet music or to adopt this tune, head over to gregscheer.com.
Have you ever tried to find a good Lent hymn? That is, a hymn about the season of Lent? There are not many, and they are not very good. My favorite is James Gertmenian’s text “Thoughout These Lenten Days,” which is paired with TALLIS CANON in Sing! A New Creation. I love the Tallis tune–I even was in a rock group named after it–but it felt too static for the movement that takes place in the six verses of Gertmenian’s text. So I wrote this sweeping melody that is reminescent of English cathedral melodies such as KING’S WESTON. One of my choir members liked the tune so much that he took to calling me “maestro” ever since he sang it. Because the tune earned me that title, I thought it would be an appropriate title for the tune as well. You can download a PDF of the tune MAESTRO at gregscheer.com or hear how we used the song in Sunday’s worship service at COS (MP3).
Update 3/16/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
Starting to do your Palm Sunday planning? Think about using this song I wrote for last year’s Palm Sunday service. The tune is the Jewish tune associated with “The King of Glory Comes,” but the text is brand new.
I kept wanting to use “The King of Glory Comes” on Palm Sunday, because the mood is right and it’s in the ballpark thematically. However, the verses of Jabusch’s text don’t fit. What I really needed was something I could use during our Palm Sunday procession. So I wrote one that captured the “Hosanna in the highest!” of the crowd in the refrain, and some of the associated Old Testament scriptures (Ps 24, Is 40) and narrative subtext in the verses.
You can almost imagine Jesus coming closer as the song progresses: The verses begin with prophecies of the Messiah with which the crowd would have been familiar. Everything is pomp and circumstance until Jesus comes into view, at which point there’s some head scratching–what kind of King rides a donkey? Verse 5 includes what is missing from many Palm Sunday songs–a foreshadowing of what was to come. By verse 6, the crowd does what crowds do, and the people are back to their festivities.
Here is the MP3. If you ask nicely I can send you string parts, and perhaps by the end of the week some brass parts.
Update 2/8/22: Sheet music for this blog is now available at gregscheer.com.
I had an unfortunate opportunity to reflect on mortality this summer when my friend Christina Mandang was hit by a car. Her sudden and senseless death at the age of 38 reminded me once again how fleeting our lives are. It is truly ashes to ashes and dust to dust, with precious little time in between. The good news is that the God who breathed life into dust to create Adam and who resurrected Jesus from the grave, is the same God who has promised to raise us from death to eternal life. Now that’s Good News!
When Christina died I was reflecting on all this and a short refrain came to me, “from the dust you shall raise us up.” I sang it to myself as I mourned her death, wrote it down, and it has remained in my idea folder ever since. Ash Wednesday gave me another chance to consider all these life and death issues, and I revisited that short refrain. I decided to pair it with the words of Psalm 103 in which God, the loving Father, “remembers we are dust.” This was an especially appropriate image, because my friend Janice had just lost her father, Frank Diehl.
Here is my sung prayer of thanksgiving for Christina and Frank, and my sung prayer of hope for the rest of us: From the Dust, You Shall Raise Us Up.
In December I blogged about an arrangement of mine that we used in this year’s Lessons & Carols service at Church of the Servant. The hymn “The God of Abraham Praise” fits beautifully with the reading about the calling of Abraham, so I arranged it for string orchestra, oboe and flute. It worked so well that I convinced Robert Nordling to commission a full arrangement for the Calvin College Orchestra. It will premiere Saturday, March 5 at 8pm in the Covenant Fine Arts Center. I hope to see you there. In the meantime, you can listen to Finalified MP3.
I don’t make a habit of posting other people’s music at my blog, but in this case I thought I’d make an exception. You can read the story and hear a recording of Zac Hick’s “All People that on Earth Do Dwell” at the COS website, and you can download my piano and SATB arrangement here. Rock on, Zac!
Last week I met with my Nepali friends Peter and Prasad to work on a on a song. Since the song was for a combined service of Basic English Service attendees and our main congregation, we decided to write a song based on Psalm 133 with verses in Nepalese and refrain in English. The process of co-writing in two languages was fun and the result (if I may say so myself) was very successful. Take a look at the PDF or listen to the MP3.