• Where my old website focused on my church compositions, I’m adding in a fairly extensive set of secular works
• I’m also setting the site up to be more menu-driven, hoping it will be easier to navigate
• I want to add more examples of scores and audio clips
• I’m hoping in all this to update scores of some older works that are still worth doing
• And all this will lead to adding on a shopping cart, as well as sending some works out to other publishers

So, instead, I wrote some music. I know this is rather on the level of saying I decided to breathe, but there it is! I finished three introits that my choir at St. Stephen’s Orinda will sing on June 26, July 3, and July 31 (the reason for the gap: the handbell choir is playing, and I wanted them to accompany the choir; they’ll need some rehearsal time). The introits are each about a minute and a half long and, along with a full-length anthem, must be able to be learned in the 45-minute rehearsal before the service. A fun challenge, indeed. (This will be my third year of summer introits, giving me the thee-year liturgical cycle.)

But wait, there’s more. Phil Sullivan, an outstanding trumpet player, will be in residence at St. Stephen’s this summer. Whenever he comes around I like to write something for us to do. The last three days have seen the development of a 4-movement suite for trumpet and organ, where two movements will serve as preludes and two as postludes. Unlike much of the stuff I’ve written for him, this piece is not hymn-based. It was FUN  getting back to a more abstract approach, where I didn’t have a melody and/or chord progression suggesting the form.

I’d love to talk about the suite a bit more, but will do so at another time. Now that I’ve written the pieces, I’m in re-write mode. Notes that sounded great in my head, and all right in MIDI playback, didn’t sound as great on the organ. So after several hours, I have my next generation of the suite. I’ll print it out in the morning and give it a try. I hope at that point to have something to share here. I excited and encouraged. Each movement stands alone, but the four together make a nice set!

June 15. I’ve started putting content back. As I’m doing so, I’m adding images and other media, as well as experimenting with the format of the site. It’s been fun visiting other composers’ pages. As I see what others find important, my own ideas change and develop.

May 22: Moved domain from one service provider to another (oops–gotta move email as well!)

May 25: Put basic structure for catalog in place. Next step: add some content…just as soon as I finish my ASCAPlus homework…

In the case of this program, we began with the Pinkham Christmas Cantata. It’s a great combination of challenging and moving moments for both audience and singers, and gave us the opportunity to design a program where brass played an important part—a treat for the Lyric Chorus, best known for its partnership with the fine pipe organ at San Francisco’s venerable Trinity Episcopal Church.

The Pinkham was designed to be sung with two brass choirs, or one brass group and organ (the version we’re doing). As we thought of what to program with it, Gabrieli’s In Ecclesiis came to mind. Just as the Pinkham is a 20th century tour de force, the Gabrieli occupies much the same position in the early 17th century. It’s actually written for a slightly larger band of instruments, but was pretty easy to arrange for our current instruments.

Since we were doing In Ecclesiis, why not include another Gabrieli, or some other multi-choir music? In short order we had added Gabrieli’s Hodie Christus natus est and Schütz’s Jauchzet dem Herren. Even though it doesn’t use brass, pairing a Schütz setting of Hodie made good sense, giving us both the opportunity to hear the text from a different vantage point as well as simply enjoy more than one work by this marvelous composer.

But wait: there’s still more music with brass! The Dufay Gloria ad modum tubae, the earliest work on our program, uses both choral and instrumental forces very sparingly, serving as a bridge from earlier chant and monophonic pieces to the later polyphonic works of the Renaissance. Because of its simplicity and directness, this work seemed like a great way to begin the concert. The Schütz Hodie, mentioned earlier, followed easily, even though the two works were separated by a couple hundred years, with the one work leading into the splendor of Renaissance polyphony, and the other a simplification of the complexity that often resulted from that polyphony.

As long as we were using brass, it made sense to have at least one work that featured our fine instrumentalists: one of Gabrieli’s Canzone per Sonare, a song without words. Although it fits chronologically between Dufay and Schütz, it follows these two in our program as it moves from the simple to multi-voice and multi-choir pieces.

After the multi-choir pieces by Gabrieli and Schütz mentioned earlier, we wanted a change of pace, both for contrast of textures and, quite frankly, to give our instrumentalists a break. Since our concert is in December, most of our music has either a Christmas or holiday theme. With that in mind, I couldn’t resist Joaquin Nin-Culmell’s delightful La virgin lava pañales. I studied composition with Don Joaquin, and came to appreciate his blend of the contemporary with the traditional. Our set of Hispanic pieces grew from that beginning, with the Vasquez En la fuente del rosel coming from a set of early Spanish choral music that Nin-Culmell edited and the González Serenissima una nocheshowing that the distance between classical and folk traditions is not very great. There is also an element of anticipation in this set, as we look towards our spring concert, Voices of Immigration¸ built around family and individual stories of our chorus members.

We wanted to end the concert with audience participation, and decided to bring back the Christmas Fantasy we premiered in 2009 (the composer part of me was quite pleased, since others suggested that we repeat the work!). In earlier planning, the second half of the concert consisted of the Pinkham cantata and the fantasy. It became apparent that something more was needed (in the Lyric Chorus we’re always looking for just one more thing!). I decided to add the brass quartet to the organ accompaniment—I can’t wait to hear it. In addition, as I was looking for that one more thing, I came across Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium Mass, very strongly modeled on his moving O Magnum Mysterium, and our concert was complete.

There are layers of connections among the pieces on this program. The predominant language is Latin, and yet as early as Schütz we have a work in the vernacular (German, in this case). Our first half ends in Spanish, yet a Spanish composer (Victoria) brings us back to Latin at the start of the second half. There is a bit of a chronological ordering, with the oldest piece first and the newest piece last, and yet the flow of musical texture and style was much more important to us than the work’s provenance.

As we move into our closing weeks of the season, with an increasing sense of urgency as we realize that rehearsal time grows ever shorter and our list of spots still not fully learned grows every longer, we nonetheless revel in the richness and variety of the music, and look forward to sharing our passion for this music with our audience.

Christmas Fantasy grew out of the process of developing the Lyric Chorus’s December 2009 program. We based our program on a list of 50 carols presented in the BBC Music Magazine. I wanted to be able to include some of the familiar carols on the list, but wished to do more with them than just sing a couple of verses and move on to the next carol–and wanted the audience to have the chance to sing. I had also been looking for a piece to end the concert, but none of the ones on the list was satisfactory. The answer was pretty obvious to me: write a piece that fulfilled these criteria.

First, a little background. To create the list, the BBC Music Magazine polled 50 choral conductors (primarily British, but including a few people across the pond…) for the five carols they most liked to include in their annual service of lessons and carols. From the 250 entries, the magazine picked the 50 most popular. As a result, in the case of some carols, like It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, tunes were picked that were more familiar to the British audience than to its American counterpart. My set begins with one of these less familiar tunes: Arthur Sullivan’s Noel. I deliberately took some time introducing this tune, so that the audience could hear it develop. As it is presented, hints (both choral and instrumental) of Richard Willis’ more familiar Carol (to American audiences, at least) appear.

The 2010 version of the Fantasy has an additional element: a brass quartet. Since our concert features music for chorus and brass, it only seemed appropriate to add the quartet to my piece. The challenge: add in the instruments in such a way that it sounds like the piece couldn’t exist without them, while at the same time NOT re-writing the choral or organ parts. In some instances, particularly when the audience sings, the brass doubles the choral harmony. In other spots, particularly those where I had the room to be more creative, the brass adds its own unique flavor.

In the example, the bottom staff shows the organ part, which is the full accompaniment in the original version. I kept the organ part spare, since I fully expected that the organist would sometimes also be the director; there are spots where I wanted a hand free to give cues and set the timing. In the 2010 version, the brass fills out the organ part, adding a fanfare to the organ pedal in the first section of the piece, while at the same time giving the sopranos their opening note as well as a hint of the melody. As the section continues, the brass fanfares build on each pedal tone, providing a bridge between organ and choir.

A short organ interlude introduces the second carol, O Come, All Ye Faithful. The audience sings along with the full ensemble on verse one. The men of the chorus sing verse two while the sopranos and altos offer a descant, hinting at yet another carol (Gloria).

The third carol, The First Nowell, begins with a canonic duet between solo soprano and tenor and ends with, well, a somewhat fanciful restatement of the refrain. This is followed immediately by a verse for audience and chorus. Following this verse, my refrain returns, leading into Silent Night. A group of soloists sings verse one, as singers move into place around the audience so that all may join together on verses two and three.

An instrumental interlude, based on Silent Night and Gloria, the tune that earlier appeared with O Come, All Ye Faithful, leads to the closing coda, with all four carols making an appearance. Ths section was perhaps the most fun to write, since Silent Night and The First Nowell are in 3, while the other carols are in 4 (note that Silent Night is presented in augmentation, while Nowell requires the singers to think in 3, while all around them the piece is in 4). It has been equally satisfying to write this piece and to work on it with the Lyric Chorus. I hope to post an excerpt, if not the full piece after our concert. If you’re in the area, come to the concert!

As a composer, it is always my hope that what I write is music to more than just my ears…

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) wrote this piece in 1961. It’s one of a number of works he wrote for chorus and organ, the best of which, imho, is Rejoice in the Lamb, written almost 20 years earlier. The organ part in the Jubilate has the same sparkle as Rejoice. It’s a challenge for a church choir, but one my choir has relished. Britten has given this short work a bit of a rondo feel, with a spirited opening section featuring antiphonal writing between unison (well, in octaves) ST and AB giving way to a thoughtful, chant-like section, succeeded by a return to the up-tempo feel of the beginning, followed in succession by another chant-like section and a closing rousing Amen.

I found out that he wrote this work as a companion to an earlier Te Deum in C written in 1934. This latter work is apparently 9 minutes long. Since the Jubilate is much shorter (a bit over 2 minutes) it doesn’t balance well. That may be why he also wrote a Venite exultemus Domino in 1961, this latter work not published until after his death. After seeing a page of the Venite, I’m thinking seriously about giving it a go. It wouldn’t surprise me if Britten had a couple of other canticles in mind, perhaps getting distracted by the War Requiem, which I believe was finished the following year.

As part of my research I visited the Britten-Pears Foundation website. Much more than I could absorb in a single visit. One of their projects is a complete online catalog of Britten’s music: definitely worth an extended visit. I also came across an exhaustive discography of Britten’s works.

The church choir sang Glory to God this past Sunday. Even though I’ve conducted portions of Messiah for the last 56 years, I’m always finding something new. This past Sunday was no exception. At a Sing, everyone tends to charge right ahead, ignoring any semblance of dynamics or musical form. My choir, on the other hand, thrives when we pay attention to “details” like dynamics, articulation and even the meaning of the text.

While we’re working with the Schirmer score–not my favorite, but the one the choir is used to–the dynamics give a nice sense of buildup, starting mezzo (sops find mp on the high f# a bit of a challenge) and gradually building to the triumphant restating of “good will” on the last page. It was such fun, that I can’t wait for our more extended performance on December 3. Now if I didn’t still have a full list of non-musical details to attend to, I would just revel in the music. But attention to detail is one of the important elements of a successful performance, so it’s back to recruiting that final instrumentalist, getting parts out to the performers, checking the stand lights, and working with a wonderful music committee, while reviewing the score and preparing the choir–what a great time to be a musician!