Category: Psalms

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Church Congregational Songs Demos Hallel Psalms Psalms

Psalm 113: From the Rising of the Sun

I finally decided to bite the bullet and do FAWM. What is FAWM, you ask? It stands for February Album Writing Month, and people who take part make it their goal to write 14 songs in 28 days. You can check out my page here: http://fawm.org/fawmers/gregscheer/.

For this year’s FAWM, I plan to write music around the “Hallel” Psalms (Psalms 113-118). For each Psalm there will be a song (that’s 6 songs), padded by instrumental interludes (7), and interjected Hallelujahs (5), for a total of 18 pieces of music. Part of the reason I decided to take the FAWM challenge this year is that I feel the need for a big project to keep me excited about life. It also coincides with a Cardiphonia project centered on the Hallel Psalms, due at the end of the month.

Now, on to the first post:

The first half of Psalm 113 is lots of beautiful creation imagery, but the second half contains some things that don’t fit as neatly into a modern worship song: God raises the needy from the garbage dump and places them among princes; he gives the barren woman children. I boiled this down to three themes in verse 2: God gives us a place at the table, a place in the kingdom of God, and a place in God’s family.

People at fawm.org get the MP3, but you, dear readers, get the PDF, too!

[Trivia for those who have too much time on their hands: this isn’t the first time I’ve set Psalm 113 to music. A few decades ago I wrote a whole cantata based on the Psalm for a church in Elterlein, East Germany.]

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Arrangement Church Live Psalms

O God of Love (Psalm 120)

I’m a song maven. When I find a song I like, I make a point of sharing it with as many people as possible. If the song comes from a pop or global context, the sharing process often includes arranging it so that the pianists in my own church can lead it.

A while back I wrote two piano arrangements (one hard, one easy, plus SATB) of Bruce Benedict’s setting of Psalm 120 (via Isaac Watts), Thou God of Love. I’m pleased to say that Bruce’s song (and my arrangement) ended up in Psalms for All Seasons and the Choral Scholar CD, Cry Out to God.

Recently we sang the song at Church of the Servant on a Sunday that included a string quartet, so I whipped up a string arrangement. It’s simple, but it worked really well.

MP3, PDF

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Choir Church Congregational Songs Live Psalms

Bless the Lord: Live at COS

“So how did it sound?” You ask.

I posted a rehearsal MP3 for my choir last week, and now you’re probably dying to know how it went on Sunday. Well, maybe not dying, but at least a tad curious. Die no more, my friends. Here’s how it sounded: Bless the Lord, O My Soul! (Psalm 103)

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Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Psalm 1: Blessed Are They

Update 10/6/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.

First of all, my humble apologies for letting 9 days go by without posting a new song. I’m sure some of you have spent more than a few sleepless nights wondering if the well had finally gone dry. Never fear, my friends. The well is still wet, but there just hasn’t been enough time to tell you about the latest, refreshing drinks from the cool waters of my musical mind. (How’s that for a metaphor?…)

On September 9 at Church of the Servant, Cindy VanderKodde led my new setting of Psalm 1, “Blessed Are They.” Yes, there are lots of very good settings of Psalm 1 that I could have used, but two things pushed me to write a new one: First, as I was going through my files in preparing the service, I found a draft I had written a few years ago. It was too much for me to resist. Second, Psalm 1 has lots of “blessed are they (read: me)” set against the wicked who reject God and curse themselves to destruction. This sort of thing is bitter medicine for moderns, who see things in far less binary terms. A spoonful of musical sugar can go a long way with a Psalm like this.

And so, I finished this new setting of Psalm 1 and we sang it the following Sunday. Take a listen to the MP3 or print out a PDF of the music (see link above).

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Praise the Lord!

When I returned home from my time in Europe, I kept in touch with Annegret. She was a music director and teacher at a church in the area. So when the Hermsdorfer Kirche had its 100 year anniversary she asked me to write a cantata for the occasion.

And that, my friends, is how a young man from Narragansett, Rhode Island has a cantata premiered in East Germany.

Preist den Herrn!/Praise the Lord!

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, The Needy

The Trübenbachs were awesome. They were a solid family trying to live right in an extremely stifling government and culture. Annegret was about my age, and she and her sister Julia took it on themselves to show me around the area. Our sightseeing included a stop at the Scheer bakery in Ernstthal, which was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced: “Hi, I might be your relative.”

Den Armen/The Needy

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Interlude

Indeed, the Trübenbach family from the Chemnitz area (Karl Marx Stadt at the time) invited me to stay with them. After my studies in Salzburg were done for the year, I hitchhiked my way through Hungary and Germany, with the goal of ending up in East Germany.

My plans were temporarily thwarted when I tried to hitchhike across the border. The guy who had picked me up got cold feet a mile from the border and let me out. I walked past a mile of cars trying to get a ride, then I got to the border on foot hoping to walk across the border. The border guards told me that I needed to take some sort of official transportation into the country, so I hitchhiked to the nearest train station.

By this time it’s getting late, I’ve been walking in the hot sun with a back pack all day, and I haven’t had anything to eat. Starving. The problem? I’m on a train in East Germany, and I’ve got no East German currency. I had a small bag of raisins which I nursed for the rest of the ride. When I arrived at my destination (a campground was the cheapest option while I waited for the Trübenbachs to pick me up the next morning) I was famished. I will not tell a lie–I traded some money on the black market so I could buy a soda and a bag of chips before drifting off to sleep.

Interlude

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Who?

When I mentioned that my ancestors came from the Chemnitz area, she told me she knew some people there and could probably arrange a place for me to stay if I wanted to explore my roots.

Family folklore has it that my great-something Scheer came to America to seek his fortune, and then went back to his home town to fetch a bride. (That’s how they rolled back then.) He was from Ernstthal, where his family owned the town bakery, and his bride-to-be was from neighboring Hohenstein, where the family business was sausage. A match made in heaven?

Wer?/Who?

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Lord of All

One of the excursions she invited me on was in the Black Forest. There I met a young woman who happened to attend a church that happened to have a sister church in East Germany.

Herrscher/Lord of All

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, You His Servants/From There

That au pair made good on her offer and invited me to her house in Steiermark when I had semester breaks in Salzburg. Then she began doing missions with Operation Mobilization. Once again, I was invited along for the ride. (If you’re getting any ideas–her intentions were purely evangelistic, and she eventually married her mission partner.)

Ihr Seiner Diener/You His Servants; Von Dort/From There