Category: Congregational Songs

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Congregational Songs Retuned hymn

All the Sacrifice Is Ended

A few weeks ago I and some other songwriters got an email from Bruce Benedict asking if we’d take part in his latest musical venture–a re:hymned version of Samuel J. Stone’s Lyra Fidelium. This collection is Stone’s hymnic reflections on the Apostles’ Creed. Inspired by Brian Moss‘s version of “The Church’s One Foundation,” Bruce thought it would be cool if a bunch of us would contribute new tunes to these classic texts in time for All Saints’ Day.

“Sure,” I said. “No problem.” I quickly chose Article V: He Descended into Hell. This may seem like an odd choice, but let me explain. First of all, it was one of two texts that others hadn’t chosen. Next, I felt it was penance for a job interview in which I submitted the Apostles’ Creed as my statement of faith and subsequently got grilled by one of the people on the search committee who asked if I *really* believed that Jesus went to hell. Very awkward.

The tune wrote itself fairly quickly. But a demo had to wait a week. When I had some free time to record the song on Friday, I spent the day laying down tracks that I realized by 2pm were sadly lacking. So naturally I brewed some coffee and assessed the situation. I started over with a more direct approach to the song. (See: Occum’s razor.) Somewhere around 4pm it all became an act of worship, and the arcane English worked its way deeper and deeper into my heart and the recording became an opportunity to explore Christ’s death, descending into hell, and resurrection more fully.

You can check out my All the Sacrifice Is Ended and a bunch of other songs at Cardiphonia Hymns of Faith page.

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Congregational Songs Contests

MY CROSBY

Update: Sheet music for this tune (still waiting for a text to call its own)
is now available at gregscheer.com.

Day 4 of my contest submission extravaganza is the second tune I entered in the St Lukes contest. Same text, new tune. This time the tune that came out was a straight up gospel hymn. So I decided to call it MY CROSBY. Hey, it’s better than MY FANNY, right?…

Feel free to write a new text for this: MP3.

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Congregational Songs Contests

MINOR CELEBRATION

Update: Sheet music for this tune (still waiting for a text to call its own)
is now available at  gregscheer.com.

Day two of our contest extravaganza finds Greg losing a hymn tune contest.

St. Lukes of Victoria, BC (that’s in Canada) held a contest for a composer to write a tune to go with Judy Trueman’s text “Celebrate God.” I wrote two. The first is this festive tune written in a minor key and named, appropriately, MINOR CELEBRATION.

It lost. Not only did it lose to 34 other entries according to the judges, but also according to a popular vote. Geez! Talk about adding insult to injury. They’ve announced the winners, but you can’t listen to them yet. So you may as well take a listen to the MP3 of my hymn tune submission. Better yet, download the PDF (at the link above) and write your own text to this new tune. Who knows? I may just post it to this blog where thousands of subscribers will peruse your poetry.

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Congregational Songs Contests Psalms

My Keeper

It’s going to be a week long extravaganza of contests, starting today!

The first song is one that I wrote a while back–1999 to be exact. “My Keeper” is a rendition of Psalm 121 that began its life as a Jars of Clay or Caedmon’s Call style acoustic rock song. I’ve always had a soft spot for this song, but it’s never quite worked as planned. The main problem is that the verse rhythm is fairly difficult, especially on the page. The second problem is that the refrain hit a high D on an “ee” syllable. That’s not particularly congregational friendly.

So when Faith Alive put out a call for songs based on particular scriptures, and one of those scriptures was Psalm 121, I knew I needed to take the opportunity to revisit “My Keeper.” In this case, the call was for “Caribbean-style” songs based on Psalm 121 for grades K-1, so I had to do some serious rethinking.

The Reggae style I used help me move the melody to a straighter, more congregational-friendly rhythm in the verse. I expect the straighter rhythm will work well even when not using the Reggae style. Recording the song–and struggling with the high Ds in the refrain–led me to repeat the first phrase of the refrain twice. Peaking at a B four times may not be as interesting of a compositional choice, but it works a lot better for the people singing the song.

Now all I have to do is wait to find out if Faith Alive feels the same soft spot for the song as I do. In the meantime, take a listen or look.

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Congregational Songs Psalms

Psalm 133: How Very Good and Pleasant

At COS we’re doing a series on stewardship and this Sunday’s theme was “Stewards of Community.” We normally use the lectionary Psalm, but I thought it would be more appropriate to use Psalm 133 this week. My favorite setting of that Psalm is Barbara Boertje‘s “How Very Good,” and my initial thought was to pair it together with readings from the Psalm, John 13:34-35, and singing Taize’s “Ubi Caritas.”

But you know me–I just can’t leave stuff alone, and I started playing around with an idea to add solo verses to Barbara’s song. My study of the Psalm tells me that the oil represents–thinking broadly–the anointing that made Israel God’s people, and the dew represents God’s blessing through food and creation. Looking through New Testament eyes, we could interpret the oil as Jesus our anointed High Priest and/or the baptismal waters that set us apart as God’s people. The dew could become the bread and wine which are a foretaste of the eternal life promised at the end of Psalm 133.

With that in mind–and with Barbara’s permission–I wrote 2 verses to go with the original song. We sang it this Sunday morning and it worked well. The verses feel like they’re cut from the same cloth as the refrain and it expands Barbara’s original idea to include the text of the whole Psalm, without increasing the difficulty of the congregation’s part. Listen to the MP3 or take a look at the PDF. (The score doesn’t include the piano part for the refrain. I just pasted it in for the time being.)

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Congregational Songs

Faithful Stewards

Last year I wrote a song based on Micah 6:8 for the Church of the Servant Girls’ Club to sing. I guess it went well, because they asked me to write another one this year. This time, they chose the scripture I Corinthians 4:1-2 (“servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries”) to coincide with Pastor Jack Roeda’s series on stewardship. The basic idea is that we are not only called to be stewards of money, but of all the gifts God has given us.

So yesterday I wrote a draft and today I revised (ie. scrapped and rewrote) and finished it up. Late this afternoon I made a quick demo. Check it out: MP3, PDF.

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Church Congregational Songs Contests Finale demo

A Humble Mass

A while back NPM (National Pastoral Musicians) held a contest  for new musical settings of the English Mass which was recently approved by the US Roman Catholic bishops. For those of you who aren’t Catholic, even small changes in the language of the mass can be a pretty big deal, with publishers scrambling to release new versions of mandated text.

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.

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Church Congregational Songs Hymn tunes Retuned hymn

Filled with the Spirit’s Power

Just trying to catch up on recent compositions:

During Pentecost, John Phiri from Sierra Leone preached at COS. The text “Filled with the Spirit’s Power” (Psalter Hymnal #417) fit well with his sermon thematically, but musically it left something to be desired. (Sorry Henry Lawes.) So I wrote a new tune. Check out the PDF or the MP3.

If you’re looking for a 10.10.10.10 tune, give this a try.

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Psalms Retuned hymn

The Making of Psalm 29

I’ve been composing a new setting of Psalm 29, and decided that I’d create a video of the process. “Oh boy,” you say. “That sounds exciting.” Indeed.

My compositional conundrum is that I have three different versions of the same song, and there are pros and cons to each version. I’m hoping you will listen to the MP3 (version 3) or download the PDF of version 1, version 2, or version 3 and give me some help. What is the best version of the song? Are there parts that you would change or different versions that you would combine? Maybe I should scrap the song entirely?

Feel free to leave your editorial suggestions here or at YouTube. Heck, maybe some of you will want to sing and play your ideas in a video response at YouTube. Have at it people–this is your chance to co-write a song with Greg!

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvsPz-pL2o

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Congregational Songs Live Psalms

Rest in the Lord, at Calvin Chapel

My friend Paul Ryan asked me to lead one of the “Sing a New Song” chapels at Calvin College this Fall. I had originally thought I’d introduce one of the songs from the “Global Songs for Worship” collection I’m editing, but as the date got closer I decided to teach my song based on Psalm 127–“Rest in the Lord, My Soul.” This decision wasn’t based (solely) on shameless self-promotion. It’s just that I realized it would be a good opportunity to lead a group of non-musicians through the process of transplanting a Psalm into a particular musical context. In the allotted 25 minutes we talked about the themes and difficulties of the original text, Michael Morgan’s metrical version of the Psalm, and my musical setting of Morgan’s text.

Don’t believe me? Then watch the video! Go to the Calvin Chapel web page, then choose the November 9, 2009 chapel in the scroll bar on the right. At about 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the video I begin my talk.