Categories
Hymn tunes

DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING (3 tunes for Isaac Watts, part 3)

Update: For sheet music or to adopt this orphan tune, head over to gregscheer.com.

In our third installment of hymn tunes for Isaac Watts texts, we encounter a 6.6.8.D text based on Psalm 93. The text implied to me music that was somewhere between regal and rustic–something that would be at home in a cathedral or a Sacred Harp sing.

Here’s what I wrote: MP3

This is an unusual hymn tune that is a little more difficult than most, but it’s quickly becoming my favorite. I love how the melody slides from an E minor/pentatonic into a G minor/pentatonic scale in the second phrase. The harmonies, too, sneak off half way through, sprint in all directions, then slip back home in the last two measures. All this crazy stuff is going on, but the song is surprisingly singable–both the melody and the inner voices.

Categories
Hymn tunes

INDY (3 tunes for Isaac Watts, part 2)

Update: For sheet music or to adopt this tune, head over to gregscheer.com.

This second tune was written for a setting of Psalm 147 in long meter (L.M. or 8.8.8.8). The trick with this one is that there are multiple and/or shifting places of stress within each line of the text. Inner rhythms are great for poetry, but difficult for hymn tunes: if you create a tune with too strong of a rhythm, the words will be mis-stressed (distressed?); if you write something amorphous to accomodate all the subtleties of the text’s rhythm, you’ll end up with musical oatmeal. So I wrote lines that have a strong sense of flow and forward movement without a lot of angular rhythms.

You may be wondering, “Greg, how do you come up with your tune names?” Good question. Most people name their tunes for the place it was composed, a church, or a person. I prefer to name my tunes:

  • A. something ridiculous, and/or
  • B. something that will jog my memory about which tune it is.

In this case, I couldn’t remember why I called this tune INDY. Was it because it reminded me of a tune by some indie band? Indianapolis, Indiana? Ah, now I remember: it’s in D.

MP3

Categories
Hymn tunes

GILLIGAN (3 tunes for Isaac Watts, part 1)

Update: For sheet music or to adopt this orphan tune, head over to gregscheer.com.

A call went out recently for new hymn tunes to go with a forthcoming collection of updated Isaac Watts texts.

Can I resist? No, I cannot.

Over the next three days I’ll post what I came up with. The first is a rousing tune in common meter (C.M or 8.6.8.6). The text, “The Islands of the Northern Sea Rejoice!” is a real foot stomper with valleys rising and mountains melting to plains. I knew the tune needed to be strong and solid, with a hint of sea chanty. My first draft sounded suspiciously like the theme from Gilligan’s Island (sea chanty indeed!). I re-wrote the offending “sit right back and you’ll hear a tale” section of the tune, but decided to commemorate my near plagiarism by naming the tune GILLIGAN: MP3.

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Quirky

Idiot

Last night I headed to Calvin College’s art gallery to record a quartet of high schoolers playing Ravel’s string quartet in F. It was truly amazing what these kids could do. At the end of the recording session I asked if they’d be willing to read through a little something I wrote. They were good sports and good readers.

Take a listen/look to/at “Idiot.”

And no, I’m not sure where ideas like this come from. One minute I’m going about my business and the next I’m singing a little tune that implicates all of humanity in a conspiracy of idiocy. The real sick part of it is when I sit down and arrange it for string quartet…

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Church Congregational Songs

“Lord God, Now Let Your Servants Depart in Peace” appears on The Gospel Coalition’s Songs for the Book of Luke

I’m very pleased to have Brooks Ritter sing my song “Lord God, Now Let Your Servants Depart in Peace” on The Gospel Coalition’s new CD, Songs for the Book of Luke. The whole project is great.

What are you waiting for? Get out your credit card and go buy it!

Also, I just added a new page for the song at my website, where you can download a leadsheet and SATB/piano accompaniment, and hear the demo I made a few years ago.

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Art Music Choir Church Congregational Songs Live Psalms

Psalm 118: This Is the Day! (Easter 2013)

Easter is always a big day for church music, and this year was no exception. What was an exception was the difficulty level of the piece I wrote for the day’s Psalm. I actually wrote this setting of Psalm 118 a few years ago, but this time around I got a good recording of it.

Psalm 118 is a sprawling, rhapsodic Psalm of emotional valleys and mountains. I wanted the composition to reflect that, but I also wanted to make it accessible to the congregation. What I came up with is a short, tuneful refrain that the congregation sings repeatedly throughout the piece. The choir, on the other hand, is given a number of episodes, each mirroring the feelings of the different parts of the Psalm. Put Laura de Jong on soprano, support her with strings, and throw in a timpani–and you’re in business!

Listen to the MP3 from Sunday, or visit the karaoke version of the score on YouTube.

 

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Finale demo Retuned hymn

I Place Myself in Jesus’ Hands

Last summer, an email arrived at Hymnary.org from Germany. A woman there was working on a translation project and was looking for an English translation of “Ich steh in meines Herren Hand” by Philipp Spitta. Interestingly, she was translating the diaries of a German woman at the request of her grandson. The grandson had moved with his parents to America, and shortly after their arrival both parents died. The newly orphaned boy was raised by an American family and soon forgot how to speak German. Now he is learning about his family’s history through the diaries he inherited from his grandmother.

Spitta’s hymn was especially meaningful to his grandmother during the turbulence of the war, and through the process of researching the hymn, I’ve fallen in love with it, too. Here is my new tune for Richard Massie’s English translation, “I Place Myself in Jesus’ Hand“: MP3, PDF.

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Art Music Church Finale demo Hallel Psalms

Hallel Post Rest

I know it’s Holy Week, but that doesn’t mean I can’t post to my blog, right? Actually, the week before Easter is usually pretty relaxed at church because the bulk of the planning and preparation is already done. So I take the opportunity to catch up on projects I’ve been putting off.

Here is the second to last movement of my slowly emerging Hallel Psalm cycle. Well, second to last to be written. It’s actually the 8th movement, coming after the song “Be At Rest” (Psalm 116) and before “All You Nations” (Psalm 117).

I gotta admit that I’m fond of this one: MP3, PDF.

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Contests Demos Psalms

Creation’s Chorus (Psalm 148)

Update 12/11/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.

I’ve had this song hanging around for over a decade, and due to a contest sponsored by Fuller Seminary (Brehm Center/Fred Bock Inst. of Music) finally decided to polish it up and send it out the door.

Psalm 148 is a call to praise three parts, starting with the heavenly realms, moving to the creatures of the earth, and finally calling all people on earth to praise the Lord. I’m not the first to write a three verse setting of this Psalm, but I’m probably the first to use a hip hop/black gospel style and an alternate third verse that modernizes the kings, princes, young and old of the original Psalm to scientists, theologians, bards and politicians!

This is a one-hour demo (that is, a 2.5 minute demo that took me about an hour to record), so try to be forgiving: MP3. (I know what you’re thinking: “couldn’t you have spent a few more of those 60 minutes tuning your guitar?…”)

Categories
Art Music Church Hallel Psalms

Hallel Post-Nations

“What’s up with the goofy name–“Hallel Post-Nations?” you say. Indeed.

As promised, I continue to chip away at my multi-movement work based on the Hallel Psalms. All the Psalm songs are done, and now I just have a few instrumental movements to finish before bringing the composition to completion and setting a date for a premiere. This movement comes right after the Psalm 117 song, “All You Nations,” hence “post-nations.” (Now that I hear the title by itself, it sure sounds apocalyptic. No matter, I’ll change the title in the end.)

Astute listeners will hear that this movement is a fugue. Or as one person put it, I’m “channeling my inner Bach.” The big difference being that Bach improvised fugues, whereas this took me many hours. One of the fun things about this movement is that it combines the folk style of the songs with the classical style of the instrumental interludes. That is, this fugue will segue directly from “All You Nations” and the guitar and bass will continue to lay down a folkish boom/chunk-a-chunk groove throughout the fugue.

You won’t hear that very well on this mock up MP3, but you’ll see it in the PDF score.