Fall
2006 CD
Project
Program
and Notes.
2006
December 12
Courtney
Duncan
Group 1, The Good
Group 2, The OK
Group 3, The Best
14.
George Gershwin Prelude I, Allegro Ben
Ritmato E
Deciso
15.
George Gershwin Prelude II, Andante Con
Moto E Poco
Rubato
16.
George Gershwin Prelude III, Allegro Ben
Ritmato E
Deciso
The Project
On and off over the last twenty or thirty years, people have asked me if I ever plan to record anything. The short answer is, Ònot really,Ó but a longer answer is that there are a few things that I would like to archive for the family and those few friends who have asked. This project is the result and these notes are the story.
Standards
In the dreaming stage the product was ideal. The recording, equipment and hall, would sound professional, the piano impeccable, and the performances polished and perfect, scintillating and electric, Òwhite hot,Ó as classical DJs like to say. The moment, however, when one takes steps to reduce the ideal to practice, it becomes real and flawed, unless, of course, you are a full time professional with the talent, obsession, and resources to make it all right.
All flaws could have been overcome by the generous application of time, effort, and money but I finally realized that any hope of actually doing the project depended strongly on not going any further than necessary down any of those paths. I could not dive into a new hobby of high fidelity recording equipment, I could not make this quantity of recordings in any better venue, I could not have the piano rebuilt or refurbished, I could not transcribe all the pieces into a digital format in the process, and I could not spend the months or even years of four to six hour practice days that it would take to really make every piece shine technically and to live with everything until it was the essence of pure music.
What I did do was this: I sat my G4 PowerBook on a wooden chair by me and the piano in my living room and recorded on its internal microphone into GarageBand ÒBasic Tracks.Ó I worked two to three hours a day four to five days a week for two months and recorded the results as they became ÒreadyÓ. I started with a piano that was in reasonably good tune but hadnÕt had its hammers filed in decades (at least not in the decade I have had it). It didnÕt hold up well under all my banging and so I touched up the tuning best I could a dozen times and cleaned up the worst of the ringers, but not everything.
I worked alone so I could fit this into a tight schedule crowded with many other responsibilities. And, I worked from my own material some of which I think is pretty good (still); but that, of course, is a matter of taste.
Had I gone ten percent further on any of these fronts the project would have proven impossible, as it has times past when I only managed a false start, if that.
For those of you who canÕt bear an audio reproduction that doesnÕt have 150 dB of fidelity or who canÕt abide a piano thatÕs not serviced for the actual piece being played, or who have ears for different tonalities than I do (you all know who you are, and I know who some of you are), suspend disbelief and console yourself with this. You are hearing, to the extent that it is important, pretty much what I am hearing. For me these reproductions, with all of their dimensions of flaws, bring me close enough to the ideal that I can do the rest mentally. Cultivate such skill and you will be a much more accepting person.
IÕm not that unhappy with the result, but
you do have to get
accustomed the sound before you can hear beyond it to any music that I
have
produced.
History
Growing Up In Church
My mother sang in the choir and my dad was the preacher. My first memories are of being in church at Frisco, Texas Methodist (when Frisco was 3000 people and Methodists were not yet ÒUnitedÓ) sitting in the pews with a sitter while mom was singing in the choir and dad was leading the Doxology from the pulpit.
The summer before first grade we moved to Henrietta, Tx, another town of 3000 on a major highway. There, I began piano study with Don Wittenbach, an organ major from Southwestern University in nearby Wichita Falls, who knew and applied the Liszt method for developing virtuosity. I was to practice 90 minutes per day six days a week, 30 minutes on scales and arpeggios, 30 minutes on exercises, and 30 minutes on pieces. Mother was the Marine Drill Sergeant who made this happen. I gave my first two recitals under Wittenbach, both Mozart, and was beginning to learn the D Minor Piano Concerto (no. 20, K466) which would perhaps lead towards a career in competitions when the Methodists (now United) moved us to Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Dallas. There was no piano study in Dallas but two more years later we moved to Taylor, Texas, where I would go through 7th through 9th grades studying independently with Mrs. Voiers, a widow with a buzzing hearing aide who taught both piano and organ. It was at Taylor where I first played in church.
Then we moved to Hubbard, Texas. I continued to play in church on a substitute and developmental basis (evening services, special programs, etc.) but there was no more formal study until dad hooked me up in the last half of my high school senior year with Jane Keys, an associate in the Piano Department at nearby Baylor University.
The Piano Major
This association with Baylor, and its nearness to Òhome,Ó were both influential in my ultimate decision to go there. In fall 1974 I was enrolled as a freshman. Coming out of Hubbard High School with barely a rudimentary scholastic background, the only hints I had as to what I might be doing next were that I had placed highly at the State level of the University Interscholastic League Science Contest, I had a ham radio license (gained independently from school), and I had this music connection with Baylor. I thought I wanted to be a double major, Math and Music.
The chair of the Math Department was a cranky old man who, like the Wizard of Oz, told me to go away and not come back until IÕd made up my mind. On the other hand, the chair of the Piano Department, Roger Keyes (no relation to Jane), knew where his support came from and immediately signed me up for a full music major load and, Òoh yes, you can take Calculus as your elective and see how it goes.Ó I aced Calculus I and II but that was all I did towards that math major and I didnÕt come back to technical courses until pursuing an engineering degree elsewhere many years later.
That, of course, is a story unto itself, and quite
lengthy
too.
So, at Baylor, I was a provisional piano major
because they
werenÕt really sure how it would work out when I didnÕt
have the twelve solid
years of artist-teacher competition-driven resume that your typical
piano major
applicant might have. After one
semester this was all cleared up.
I was a piano performance major, top of the line.
Jane Keys had been temporary and had
changed Universities as I was coming in, but she had roomed that year
with Jane
Abbott (now Abbott-Kirk) a major teacher in the department who I would
work
with through my formal Baylor career.
In 1977 I gave a Junior Recital (Mozart, Chopin,
Liszt), in
1978 I gave a Senior Recital (Bach, Beethoven, Prokofiev), and
performed a
concerto movement with the Baylor Symphony (Khachaturian).
As a performance major I was also required to take
considerable Music Theory and Composition. These
were influential in this story, as was Contemporary
Styles Week where the Music
School put
together a vast festival of modern music from Stravinsky to Cage and
beyond. The idea was to bend our
ears to modern sounds and, in a mentally exhausting week, they
succeeded. You hear this in my
arrangements.
Rosehill United Methodist
September 2, 1978 Viann Owens and I were married. Dad performed the ceremony at ViannÕs sisterÕs ElizabethÕs house. We lived in Dallas for a year and a half where I worked first as a police dispatcher, then a TV transmitter technician, then as a videotape editor at KXTX Channel 39, at that time part of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pat RobertsonÕs empire. The music skills were sometimes useful editing videotape segments.
My motherÕs father having recently passed away, my parents had his piano rebuilt and gave it to me as a college graduation gift. This piano, an Adam Schaff tall upright, dates back to the first decade of the twentieth century and before coming to me lived in Kansas then the panhandle of Texas, both dry climates.
In 1980 ViannÕs mother died and we
relocated to Tomball,
Texas to help with her father, who was very ill himself.
After a few months, he too died. We
began searching for a church. Viann had
connections in the area and
we were soon recruited to the rural Rosehill United Methodist church
nearby. Within weeks (maybe one
week) I was brought on as music director for this small congregation. I did some composing and arranging as
part of that job, and also learned how to work with and lead musicians
at a
wide range of skill levels, and other
accompanists.
After a few years of installing cable TV for a living I decided to pursue an Electrical Engineering degree at University of Houston. We eventually left Rosehill and Tomball and moved into Houston three blocks from the Astrodome. We visited a different church every Sunday for six months then learned, through a Bible Study Fellowship connection that the Covenant denomination was going to plant some churches locally, not because the Bible Belt needed more churches, but because none of the churches in the Bible Belt were Covenant.
Champions Covenant
We were charter members of the first plant, Champions Covenant and after my graduation from University of Houston and the birth of our first daughter, Viannah, (the church mascot) we moved back out to northwest Harris County to be near that church and the independent business interests I was developing. Rick Carlson was sent by the Covenant to lead the music ministries in the developing churches and he had a small staff, a group called Bandwagon, alumni from his Covenant traveling troupe, Heartsong.
I was grafted into this group and was eventually the paid accompanist for the Champions congregation. This was considerable work in addition to the ÒperformingÓ duties. The church met in a rented movie theater and every Sunday involved a major set up and tear down in that space.
It was one year during this period when I took every Wednesday and wrote a composition or arrangement to be used in the church at offertories. These pieces did not need to be long as the offering rarely took over 45-60 seconds to collect. Many of the pieces on this CD are those offertories.
After writing two or three dozen of them, I started using RickÕs synthesizer setup to sequence and ÒorchestrateÓ these pieces and, as a result, ran through many of them again. The manuscripts contain many notes from the original performances, the various versions of arrangements, and even from todayÕs recording series. Errors have been discovered even now. TodayÕs recordings are the original piano versions.
During this period the Challenger Space Shuttle was lost shortly after launch on January 28, 1986. The following Wednesday I was unable to think of much else and, like many others in the nation that month, I was hurting. When I sat at the piano that day, I did not arrange a hymn tune but wrote in just a few hours an original piece, Challenger Seven. The mood of the piece is not wrenching or painful but serene and light. The image is of a flowery meadow on a bright day with puffy clouds, perhaps a time and place for a picnic. But, as the piece goes on it becomes reflective then runs into a sudden dead end, as did the flight of the Challenger. At the conclusion, the theme is restated. Life goes on after tragedy, though it is somewhat different and more somber.
Only after Challenger Seven was complete and had been performed several times did someone point out to me that the opening statement consisted of seven notes, ascending. The figure was intentional, but the number seven was not. The figure repeats later as the mood turns quiet and sad.
When we were to leave Champions Covenant, Rick asked me to do something Òall out,Ó as a finale for my musical work there. He probably had in mind something more grand and orchestrated, but, under the ever-present time pressures and competing responsibilities, I fell back on my most familiar medium, Theme and Variations for Solo Piano. A Charge To Keep is the result.
This was performed on our very last Sunday at Champions. We would move to California the following week. Our second daughter, Katherine, was baptized (by my dad) in worship in the movie theater that same day.
First, the theme is stated. This is nearly straight out of the hymnbook, though I must say that I never referred to a hymnbook in doing any of this work, the tunes were so familiar to me and I was going to go so far afield with them anyway.
After the statement, the first three variations
are various
classical forms, each ending with a two measure selah, an idea that comes from the second
movement of
ProkofievÕs 3rd Piano Concerto, itself a much more
involved theme
and variations. The fourth
variation is dark and distressed and is meant to represent the pain and
anguish
of leaving a community for new and unknown adventures.
In the fifth variation, however, there
is hope that all will be well and at the end, the hymn is simply
re-stated, as
it might be on the last verse of the last hymn of a Sunday evening
church
service. The moment, the service,
the week is over, now history.
Pasadena Covenant
My independent business interests were going nowhere and it was decided that I should get a real job. After working locally for a year I did serious research to find the place where I should go. A majority of indicators pointed to NASAÕs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the people who explore the furthest out of anyone, sending spacecraft all over the solar system. We moved to Pasadena and soon were involved, by referral, with Pasadena Covenant Church. I used A Charge to Keep to audition for the music director, Roland Tabell, though my reputation had preceded me and he neither needed nor wanted to hear it.
A few times over the last nineteen years or so, IÕve brought some of these pieces out for various occasions. The music program at Pasadena Covenant is quite vibrant and needs very little ÒfillÓ of this type, but there is the occasional thin Sunday in the summer when something like this is appropriate. Since Pasadena is a somewhat larger congregation and the offering takes longer to collect, I sometimes chain two of the pieces together. They werenÕt intended that way so it can be a little awkward, but I need the transition practice and experience anyway.
Anita and Randy Sorenson hosted a holiday season Sunday School party for the 60-Minutes class in 1990 at which I was the program. I played several of these pieces on their fine piano interleaved with some of the same stories IÕm telling here. This could have led to more performances of the same type, but given the amount of preparation involved, I turned them down.
That was the year (1990) that our son, John was born. He and the girls all went through the excellent childrenÕs music program at Pasadena Covenant from beginning to end. John is now a junior in high school and his sisters are both in college.
A theme that runs through most of these pieces is that somewhere in the middle IÕll get so involved in harmonic or rhythmic complexity that the melody becomes implied. You could hum or sing in your head along with the Òaccompaniment,Ó but it doesnÕt actually appear in the piano part. On at least one occasion, IÕve used one of these in church and written the melody back in as a solo. In the case of We Are One in the Spirit, the solo was done by our brilliant flautist, Will Salmon.
Another time our church was visited by a traveling show celebrating the ÒoldÓ hymns and I used Standing On The Promises as an offertory for that service. Interesting that the hymns, which were such an integral part of my musical and spiritual upbringing that IÕve found outlet throughout life by arranging them, are now celebrated as something largely belonging to the past.
Morse Code has a similar story, institutionally and personally. (Yes, IÕm also a Òbrass pounder.Ó)
In January 1994 the Northridge Earthquake struck our area. My fatherÕs cousin Sappho Henderson lived at the time near the epicenter. In the aftermath, the decision was made that she would move to Hawaii, where it was safer, to live with one of her children. She decided not to move her Howard (a type of Baldwin) baby grand piano with her, however, and offered it to me if I would move it from Chatsworth to my house. This is the piano these recordings were made on. It has a history similar to my other piano, having spent most of its life in New Mexico before coming to California.
Two pianos in the house are too much, so we sold
the Adam
Schaff to a family in the church whose children were learning to play. By the same convention they arranged for that move.
The Other Stories
Everything here (except the Gershwin) is something
that I
wrote down by hand on staff paper (mostly green staff paper), either a
free
form arrangement, or a near direct take down from a record, or in the
case of Challenger
Seven, an original composition. Often IÕve made them so difficult that
I can barely play them myself but sometimes the aim has been beauty
through
simplicity.
Having done this every week for several months in
the mid
80s gives me a more profound respect for J.S. Bach, who wrote new
cantatas for
church every week for years!
Beyond this background, here are a few other
specific stories.
By the way, the groupings ÒGood,Ó
ÒOK,Ó and ÒBestÓ above
refer to the quality of the composition, not the performance or
recording.
Beyond Saturday Night
This is an original piece by Leslie Philips, who
you may
know from her song Strength of My Life among
others. She now goes by Sam
Philips and does music for the Gilmore Girls. She
was born in Glendale and has always worked out of
southern California but I first heard of her as a Christian Rocker in
the 80s
on HoustonÕs contemporary Christian station, KSBJ.
Beyond Saturday Night
is the title song from an album from that period. It
talks about the party spirit endemic to young folks,
often culminated in the Saturday night hoot but then asks the haunting
questions, ÒWhat next?Ó ÒIs that all?Ó
The unstated implication is
É Sunday.
Standing on the Promises
At Henrietta and Taylor (and maybe other places
IÕve
forgotten) one of the things we did was to take a turn bringing church
to the
local nursing homes. Before I was
playing piano, we were going to such a place on the west side of
Henrietta
where this hymn was the favorite of one of the elderly patients. He always requested it and we always
sang it. This is one of those
celebrated tunes with a special part that the men can stand out on and
this
fellow surely did. I donÕt know
that I ever knew his name, but one Sunday when we arrived for our
service only
to learn that this man had gone home to be with the Lord.
We sang it again in his honor.
Twenty and forty years later, my conception of Standing
on the Promises is that an
arrangement of
it should be over the top in some way.
This is the closest IÕve gotten to writing down jazz.
Procession of Nobles
This is my own piano transcription of part of the
work from Nikolay
Rimsky-KorsakovÕs Mlada
and has always
been one of my favorites. It is a
flashy orchestral work with trumpet fanfares and plays much like a
march.
I had toyed with the idea of working some of it
out as a
piano piece and had written down some notes when our friends Jan
Tarsala and
Cheryl Boettcher announced they were going to be married during the
holiday
season eleven years ago and that they wanted me to bring the music. Viann had always said that if she got
married again she wanted this as a wedding march, so we sold Jan and
Cheryl on
the idea and I did something uncharacteristic. I
formalized the arrangement and wrote it out as carefully
as my poor handwriting would allow.
It took several weeks of diligence to get it ready for the
ÒperformanceÓ
at the wedding.
Jan being a fellow amateur radio operator (ham),
the crowd
that day was full of our radio colleagues. After
this processional, one of them was heard whispering,
ÒNot bad for a ham.Ó
Today Viann and I are godparents for the Tarsala
children,
Kristen and Rosalie.
As with most of my arrangements, this one is in
some ways
too difficult for me to play without incurring injury.
One sign of a good composer is an
understanding of the instrument and its technique so that music is also
feasible. This is a skill IÕm
still working on. Nonetheless, I
sometimes fantasize that I might someday have motivation to rework the
transcription into a healthier rendering and complete it with the
middle and
end sections from the original work.
Ideally, I would refer to the original score since it always
contains
subtlety that you donÕt hear in performance, unless you are the
performer.
A Savior From On High
Comparatively recently (Christmas season of 1996) I somehow came upon an album, Stephen Paulus Carols For Christmas, with the Dale Warland Singers. In this collection, Paulus has arranged familiar carols and written some new ones, mostly set for harp and choir. I was enchanted by A Savior From On High and, for reasons that I have forgotten, decided to write down a three verse piano arrangement of it. I did it all from memory without referring to the recording and so didnÕt get the melody exactly right, so I guess I have to say Òbased onÓ for this one. I like the Paulus melody and harmonies better than mine. Another project for Òone of these days.Ó
Gershwin Preludes
For the finale we turn to an unexcelled modern composer. Having been exposed to the piano trio version (piano, violin, cello) of these preludes, I was surprised (but shouldnÕt have been) to learn that there are many other arrangements including the original, a setting for solo piano.
I stopped piddling around at the piano trying to play this by ear, a virtual impossibility given the rich complexity of GershwinÕs harmonies and textures (and, see ÒsubtletiesÓ above); and just bought the sheet music. I have worked on these on and off for about a year and had thought that with all of that effort it would be reasonable to memorize them and really shake them out for this recording. As the end of the project neared, reality settled in on this as well (see ÒStandardsÓ) and I ended up just doing the best I could with them under the circumstances and am, again, begging your understanding and projection.
Still, it is nice to have a showpiece written by a composer skilled at making it just the right difficulty.
Wrap
This is the ÒFall 2006 CD Project.Ó I spent about two months on it, three
or four hours a day, four or five days a week. Yes,
this made for some late nights and some overdue bills.
One of my concerns had been that IÕd get
all of this
material down in GarageBand then find that it was not possible to make
old-fashioned CDs that would play on any old player.
Credits to MacIntosh, I was able to do the whole post-production
in one evening (in fact, this
evening) in
only about twice the amount of time that it takes to actually listen to
the
CD. It really was only four easy
steps. Here I was ready to do
battle once again with a computer that wanted me to invent from dirt
what I
wanted, then finally have to give up and settle for something less. What I wanted this time Òjust
worked.Ó IÕm glad I
donÕt use a PC
anymore (except when absolutely necessary).
If you have any problem playing the CD on any
player, let me
know and IÕll see if I can work it out.
I have what I think is a lowest-common-denominator CD player,
vintage
1992. It plays on that so I think
it ought to play on anything.
The experience brought back some of the feelings
and
memories of Music School and reminded me of one of the reasons why I
ended up doing
something else for a career.
Performance art is difficult.
You need to get it right the first time on the spot and you need
to know
how to prepare to do that.
Recording is even worse.
There is no concept of, Òoh well, water under the
bridge.Ó Rather, you are always
thinking, ÒLetÕs
try again; I know I can get it all right this time!Ó The recording takes donÕt include
rehearsal time, which was
in some cases extensive, but as the process evolved I got to where I
enjoyed
the freedom of rehearsing but dreaded hitting the
ÒrecordÓ button.
One of these pieces was particularly frustrating, Come
Ye
Sinners. It
took 19 takes.
ThatÕs why the one I finally settled on seems a little
too fast. Others took somewhere in the
teens but
most were five or six (or eight).
Challenger Seven took
only one take and itÕs a good thing because I have trouble
reading my own
writing through the tears.
There were a few moments when I really felt like I
was
putting down music. Sometimes that
very thought precipitated a crash (more Music School nostalgia) but,
listening
to the product, there are a few places where it does shine. PlacesÉ
As mentioned before, there are several themes
running
through my arrangements, and not until I did them all together in this
way was
I aware of them. Not only does my
compositional discipline reflect my spiritual and mental disciplines in
that
IÕll wonder off into different tonalities or different meters as
an end in
themselves, and then maybe end with some sort of surprise, IÕll
also nearly
always get carried away into theoretical technical complexity so deep
that the
melody becomes optional.
I didnÕt mention it under
ÒStandardsÓ but there are other
things to be forgiving of. I did
this at home around the family.
The clock bongs, the wind chimes on the door sound, pots and
pans clang
in the background, the cat walks by with his jingly collar, somebody
will shout
or turn up their own SKA in the next room to where you can hear it. You can hear the bench squeak (like
Glen Gould!) and hear me turning pages and starting and stopping the
recordings.
At the very least IÕve attempted to edit
out all my own
swearing.
After a bunch of takes, I usually marked the one I
was going
to use ÒuseableÓ or ÒprobablyÓ, rarely
anything more positive than that. But, in
the end, I think what you have
here meets itÕs intended purpose.
ItÕs a pretty good archive of some pretty good stuff that
I once worked
on. Give him a B+.
As 2006 comes to a close and we again pause to
observe the
days when God came to live on this earth like we do, it my prayer that
you find
blessing through this meager effort.
La Canada Flintridge, California, 2006 December
14
© 2006 Courtney Duncan
Second
CD
Some of you have a second CD.
Immediate family only!
This is truly for archival purposes since I donÕt have
the resources by
myself to fully do these performances Òright.Ó
In other words, standards are even lower here. I have tolerated rhythm breaks for page
turns and other such errors that were not too glaring to be overly
distracting. Particularly where I
have played guitar (synthesized acoustic, in GarageBand), note that
there is no
appreciable velocity control (you get what you pay for) and I found this
accompanist (the guy who laid
down the
first track) hard to follow while attempting ÒMusical
TypingÓ for the first
time.
Contents
1. KatyÕs Recital Piece from Halloween
2004.
2. Mass
3. Christmas Carol in F minor
4. Be Thou My Vision
KatyÕs Recital Piece, Halloween 2004.
Katherine studied piano with Elizabeth Sawitske
for a couple
of years while in High School.
This had been one of the hopes of having a piano in the house,
besides
having something for me to play.
Before I had this MacIntosh (that IÕm
typing on right now,
and which made these recordings and produced the CDs), I had a surplus
PC
configured to make recordings and burn CDs. This
was an earlier version of the intent to do this project
Òsome day.Ó I tested the
setup
while Katy was preparing for her first recital.
I no longer remember the name of the piece or the
composer,
but it is intended to convey a Halloween mood and Katy did a good job
with
it. It took her twelve tries to
get it all right in a single take (similar to dadÕs struggles
discussed above). I was hoping that she
would learn from
the experience that playing in practice and playing for performance
have
different stress levels and that anything that ever went wrong in practice will go wrong in performance unless you really
hammer it
out with drilling and attention.
ItÕs a tightrope.
IÕm glad she had the experience.
The Mass, World Communion Sunday 1983.
As a high school kid in Band Camp, one of my
favorite pieces
was the Kyrie from a mass (for concert band of all things) that we
performed
one year.
As music director at Rosehill United Methodist
Church, I
somehow decided that I wanted to celebrate World Communion Sunday of
1983 in a
big way by setting the liturgy myself, writing my own
ÒMassÓ as it were. I ended
up doing four of the pieces, which
are included here. A fifth was
borrowed from standard Methodist resources.
The Kyrie
is my
favorite, though the production here is not great.
The text is
(three times each)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord Have Mercy)
Christe Eleison (Christ Have Mercy)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord Have Mercy)
In my view, this text should be performed with the
utmost
supplication and humility, nearly to the point of despair, perhaps like
a
requiem. Some Kyries IÕve heard
remind me of Gilbert and Sullivan, by contrast. We
did HaydenÕs Nelson Mass in college. It
was powerful and appropriate
throughout.
In my SAB setting, the women sing the English
while the men
sing in the Latin. I have used
GarageBand synthesized instruments guitar for the womenÕs part
and flute
(though in such a low register it doesnÕt sound like flute) so
that you can see
how the harmonies were intended.
The timbres trivialize the mood in my view, but these were the
best
ÒsoloÓ or ÒleadÓ canned instruments I could
find.
For the rest, IÕve not tried to add to the
piano.
In the Agnus Dei, the
accompaniment fully doubles the unison choir.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the
world, have
mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the
world, have
mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the
world, grant
us thy peace.
In the Sursum Corda (Lift
Up Your Hearts), the single note melody is done by choir and only
splits into
SA at the end. The interspersed
chords are accompaniment.
(Sopranos) Lift
Up Your Hearts.
(All) We lift them up unto the Lord.
(Sopranos) Let
us give thanks unto the Lord.
(SA) It is meet
and right to do so.
Finally, in the Sanctus (Holy,
Holy, Holy) I have tried to play louder in the parts where
accompaniment
doubles the choir (SA) and nearly always succeeded.
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
Glory be to Thee O Lord most high.
Amen.
(If you actually want to see the music for this, I
can
accomodate.)
Christmas Carol in F minor.
1974 – 1981.
Not mentioned in the Piano Major above was that, the very first semester
in music
school I sat down one day and sketched out what I called the Christmas
Carol in F minor.
I took this home to mother and she wrote a six-verse poem The
Message of Christmas to go with
it.
When I was choir director at Rosehill UMC, I
thought IÕd use
this as part of the Christmas Program my first year there, 1981.
This was a learning experience in many ways. The composition was weak in at least
one important way; it repeated the main theme three times per verse. While this would be fine and normal if
there were two or three verses, repeating the main theme eighteen times is a little more than I can bear
today.
Viann and I drafted up the piece in a
choir-readable form
and I went to work making up an accompaniment, the typical
Òtheme and
variations for pianoÓ in which each variation made an attempt to
color the
message in the words in some way or other. I
have included a copy of the choir sheet mainly so that you
can see the poetry. It also shows
the straight harmony. (As you can
tell, this was ViannÕs copy in the choir.)
As the Christmas Program drew near this became the
showpiece
and it turned out that my big accompaniment was too much for our usual
accompanist to play. For this,
then, I went to the piano and directed from there.
There were solos of various sorts, part and full choir
verses and so forth. I may have
done one of the verses solo (yes, singing and playing) myself, but I
donÕt
remember anymore. We got through
it but I remember having the impression that this was no oneÕs
favorite
Christmas Carol. Favoritism has a
lot to do with familiarity, after all.
What we have here is me playing the big
accompaniment and a
GarageBand Acoustic Guitar with the melody so that you can see how it
was
intended to fit together. As with all
the rest (ÉStandards, that accompanist
on the first track, etc.) the performance is not
Òperfect.Ó The aim is only
for you to get the
idea.
All of that said, there are nice moments in the
Carol but as
an overall piece it would need some major rework to overcome the
compositional
flaws.
After that Christmas I started on my second bachelorÕs degree, this time in engineering (beginning with Calculus III), and the other two Christmas Programs at Rosehill (1982 and 1983) were based on the published works of others.
Be Thou My Vision.
July 1981.
After starting as volunteer, then $100/month choir
director
at Rosehill in January 1981 I went on a campaign of writing, preparing,
and
using my own compositions and arrangements. This
was one of the early ones. Viann was the
soloist.
For this recording I couldnÕt get good
enough at GarageBand
ÒMusic TypingÓ to play the much needed melody on the
synthesized guitar so I
gave up and went back to the piano and recorded a separate track so you
could
see how the melody fits in. To
distinguish the piano melody from the accompaniment, the melody is
played an
octave higher than written.
The words of the four verses are straight out of
the
hymnbook.
Notice the variable-length interludes between
verses. This was intentional, to keep
everybody
awake. One of the interludes hints
at a false key change. I
particularly like the piano solo verse between verses three and four. As always, IÕve wandered into different
tonalities and meters than could be used under singing, but in a more
restrained way than in some of my other (later) works.
I think a modern churchgoer of even
modest musical knowledge could follow and appreciate this breather. At the end of the solo I couldnÕt help
take the key up a half step, for real this time. After
all, it says, ÒHigh King of Heaven.Ó
What other way could it go?
Wrap 2
Looking through my folders and notebooks, the
material on
these two CDs looks like maybe half of the things IÕve written
down (composed
or arranged) over the last thirty years discussed.
If I was going to make some sort of record of what I had
done along these lines, these are the pieces I would choose to put
down, so
thatÕs what I did.
Other things on the Òto do list?Ó Nothing musical for a while, but one of these
days I do hope
to locate recordings of some of my Baylor performances and move them to
modern
media, for another Òfamily archive,Ó of course.
LCF 2006 December 14
© 2006 Courtney Duncan
added mp3 links 3/3/12 cbd