Colin Gordon-Farleigh and I have written dozens of songs together, and now some of them are beginning to travel. Case in point: Canadian singer Jaye D Marie has included our song “Dreamin” on her latest release.
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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.
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Before Your Manger
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 10/1/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.
Two years after Naaman Wood and I began collaborating on “Restore Us, O God,” the song has finally been sung by an actual congregation. I think you’ll agree that it went swimmingly:
Of course, its success is due in part to the Church of the Servant Guitarchestra, which got its Klezmer on for this one. It’s also due to my congregation’s enthusiasm for singing. Listen to the way they dive right in when I invite them to sing.
All in all a successful debut of the Wood/Scheer writing team. What’s next, Naaman?
Can’t get enough? Take a look at the leadsheet (see link above) or listen to the first and second drafts.
Update 12/29/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
A few years ago I co-wrote a song with Isaac Watts called “Arise, O King of Grace, Arise,” aka “O Savior Come.” I hadn’t thought much about it lately until one of my fellow worship planners here at the church chose the song for a Christ the King Sunday service. Watts teases out the Christological overtones of Psalm 132 so that it works beautifully in that service as well as during Advent. I decided to revisit the song, with a piano accompaniment and string arrangement. Listening to the way the congregation grabs ahold of the song, singing with more gusto each verse, makes me realize that this one’s a keeper.
Available from gregscheer.com:
- Leadsheet
- Piano
- Strings: Score, Violins, Viola, Cello
Update 1/24/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
Yesterday was Church of the Servant’s monthly BES Combined Service. That’s the service that brings the “Basic English” congregation together with those in the “Standard English” service. I try to choose music that both congregations know or that uses simple lyrics, while still following the same liturgical movements and lectionary texts. Not an easy task.
Yesterday the lectionary called for the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79; the song of Zechariah) as the “Psalm” for the day. The most accessible version I found was Michael Perry‘s 1973 text, “Blest Be the God of Israel.” (Although I changed the word “harbinger” to “messenger.”) It’s usually paired with MERLE’S TUNE by Hal Hopson. That’s a beautiful tune, but wasn’t quite in the groove of a BES Combo service, so I finished up an idea I had been working on a few weeks before. This new tune has a lot of similarities to the Peruvian Gloria, and could even use that as an extended Amen at the end of the song.
Download the leadsheet (see link above) and be the first to use it in your town!
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Wendell Kimbrough promo
My friend Wendell Kimbrough asked me to do a promotional video for his Kickstarter campaign. I had a little too much fun with it, as you can see from this YouTube video. I’m pleased to report that his fundraising campaign was successful. (Due, I’m quite certain, to my endorsement…) Now that he has nothing to lose from bad publicity, I thought I’d unveil the first take of my promotional video:
1. When I think of worship, I think of Jesus–
Jesus and Wendell Kimbrough.
Wendell wants to make an album and he needs us;
needs us to help him make this thing go.
Why don’t you donate today?
There are so many ways to pay:
credit card or check,
bitcoin or debit.
Together we will make a way.
2. Jesus doesn’t have an album–thought that would be awesome–
so people have to write their own songs.
Wendell Kimbrough writes songs that are awesome,
and I hear that everybody sings them in heaven. (refrain)
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Ready My Heart
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.
Update 12/29/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
Here is a new song co-written by Isaac Watts and me.
My pastor, Jack Roeda, is preaching through Hebrews and pointed out the other day that there are few songs that use the image of Jesus as high priest. Shepherd, Bread of Life, yes, but not high priest. Even though I knew he was baiting me, I took the hook and went off to find some good high priest songs. I fell in love with this text by Isaac Watts and wrote a new tune for it.
On thing I’ve been thinking about a lot in my writing lately is the “Occam’s Razor” principle, which basically states that the simplest answer is likely the simplest answer. Another way to state it might be “don’t gild the lily” or Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s famous, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
I’ve spent most of my life trying to master the intricacies of putting notes together, and now I’m realizing that sometimes music sounds best in its simplest forms. This doesn’t take less mastery, but more. In any case, I kept reminding myself of this while writing the tune for this song, and I think I was able to strip it back to an extremely simple, clear form that sings well. Listen to the way the volume of the singing increases on each verse–that is music to a composer’s ears!
You can download the leadsheet or the string parts at the link above. If you’re a worship nerd, you can hear some more highlights from yesterday’s service. If you’re a hymn nerd, you can visit Hymnary.org to see how Watts’ original text was broken into two modern hymn texts: Join All the Glorious Names and Jesus, My Great High Priest. (And how I chose from his 12 verses to come up with my 4 verses and a refrain.)
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.
