This Month's Featured Posts

Choral

An Invocation: Blessed Jesus, at Your Word

SATB with handbells, tenor cantor | 3.5 min | Listen

When I meet Johann Rudolph Ahle (1625-1673) in heaven, I hope he will have forgiven me for finding his melody for “Blessed Jesus, at Your Word” wanting, possessing all the melodic charm of a doughty, dreary, doorbell chime. If you have loved this hymn, perhaps you will find my innovation unnecessary. But this is a hymn I had always avoided– until one day when I stumbled upon it in an old hymnal and read the fervent, impassioned words penned in 1663 by Saxony Pastor Tobias Clausnitzer (1619-1684). I believe that the 1671 marriage to Ahle’s melody was one of convenience, as his tune had already been attached to several other texts before. In 1885 Clausnitzer’s poem was brought to brilliant light for all English-speaking Christians by the gifted Catherine Winkworth, the foremost 19th-century translator of German hymns:

Blessed Jesus, at your word
we are gathered all to hear you.
Let our hearts and souls be stirred
now to seek and love and fear you.
By your gospel pure and holy,
teach us, Lord, to love you solely.

All our knowledge, sense, and sight
lie in deepest darkness shrouded,
till your Spirit breaks our night
with your beams of truth unclouded.
You alone to God can win us;
you must work all good within us.

Glorious Lord, yourself impart;
Light of Light, from God proceeding,
open lips and ears and heart;
help us by your Spirit’s leading.
Hear the cry your church now raises;
Lord, accept our prayers and praises.

In this SATB setting I have reiterated “Blessed Jesus, at your word, we are gathered all to hear you,” at the end of each verse. Spare handbells evoke a stillness, a centered call to worship.

Choral

Home

SATB palindromic setting from John 14 with piano | 4 min | Listen

The text for “Home” directly quotes some of Jesus’ last words given to his disciples. One morning, as I was reading Chapter 14 of John’s Gospel, I was struck by the beautiful symmetry of Jesus’ message, and decided to set it to music in a way that would highlight its form, after that of a poetic palindrome (a framework proceeding and receding symmetrically from a mid-point). Marvelous, hopeful, intimate words of reassurance and union surround a simple, stark central teaching: “If you love me, keep my commandments.” The piece begins and ends with the concluding verse of David’s Psalm 23.

“… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord…”

Don’t be troubled,
Don’t be afraid,
Have faith in God,
Have faith in me.

I am making a home for you.
I, myself, will bring you there to be with me.

I am the way (home), I am the truth, I am your life.
~~~
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
~~~
I am the way (home), I am the truth, I am your life.

I will ask the Father to send a Helper, to be in you, to show you truth.
We will come to you, and make our home in you forever.

You are not an orphan,
You are not alone,
You have my peace,
I am your home.

“… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever…”

The ultimate message is that, through the agency of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God’s desire is that his home be in us, as we are at home in him… union on earth and in heaven!

Vocal Solo

I’d Rather Have Jesus

with piano | 4 min | Listen

When asked to develop music for an endowment dinner, this old song immediately came to mind. It represents the perfected priorities of a well-lived life (here arranged for mezzo-soprano Cynthia Dean).

Long before its composer, George Beverly Shea, became the world-famous baritone soloist for the evangelistic Billy Graham Crusade, he wrote “I’d Rather Have Jesus,” in response to his mother’s influence. She had left Rhea F. Miller’s 1922 poem on their piano, hoping that her son would read it, and he did. The words moved George, and spoke to him of his own aims and ambitions. He sat down at the piano and began singing the poem to a tune that seemed to fit the words, and the next day sang it in church. Though George had been offered a popular music career with NBC, a few years later he chose to become associated with Billy Graham and sang this song to millions of people around the world.

 

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;

I’d rather be His than have riches untold;

I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands.

I’d rather be led by His nail pierced hand…

 

Than to be the king of a vast domain

or be held in sin’s dread sway.

I’d rather have Jesus than anything

this world affords today.

 

I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause;

I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause;

I’d rather have Jesus than worldwide fame,

I’d rather be true to His holy name.

 

He is fairer than lilies of rarest bloom;

He is sweeter than honey from out the comb;

He is all that my hungering spirit needs.

I would rather have Jesus and let Him lead…

 

Than to be the king of a vast domain

or be held in sin’s dread sway.

I’d rather have Jesus than anything

this world affords today.

Choral

Angels!

Unison with piano | 3 min | Listen

What a privilege to introduce the traditional carols of Christmas to young children! And the chorus of Angels We Have Heard On High provides a delightful opportunity to introduce the thrill of singing perfect melismatic unison lines together in their head voices– in Latin, no less!

I begin and end with original material, providing a vivid biblical image for young imaginations:

The angels sang, the heavens rang,
the sky was filled with music,
sweet music, sweet music…

Gloria in excelsis deo!

Angels we have heard on high,
sweetly singing o’er the plains;
And the mountains in reply
echoing their joyous strains.

Gloria in excelsis deo!

The angels sang, the heavens rang,
the sky was filled with music,
sweet music, sweet music…

So here’s a little fundamental Latin, soaring melismas, a minimum of words to memorize, an English lesson (i.e. “strain”), poetic imagery (singing mountains! a filled up sky!) well-supported by a straight forward, expressive piano accompaniment. My favorite moment is hearing them sing, “Sweet mioooo-zik!”

Choral

Counting Song

SA/SSA with flute and piano | 3 min | Listen

As an inveterate counter of stairs, hours, and virtually any sort of object, I’m transported by the idea of the impossibility of quantifying the seemingly infinite elements of God’s creation. No matter how advanced a young person’s conceptions of arithmetic or mathematics, the ultimate largeness of the Creator calls us all to wonder!

How many leaves cling to the trees?
How many trees stand on the hill?
How many hills roll on and on?
Counting them all, I’m counting still…

How many raindrops fall from the clouds?
How many clouds fill up the sky, where
How many stars shine on and on?
Counting them all, I’d count so high…

Chorus (repeats)
But our God is bigger than the highest number,
He has counted ev’ry cloud and tree;
He knows ev’rything, for He has made it.
He cares for ev’rything, including me…

How many feathers cover the wings of
How many birds that fly and bring
How many songs to our Heavenly King?
Maker of all, His praise we sing!

Inspired by my association with Seattle Children’s Chorus, this SA arrangement was first performed during a Thanksgiving Day Service at Bellevue Presbyterian by their youth choir, Bel Canto, with a flute part beautifully interpreted by Maya Lewis.