A Recent Large-Scale Work: Sing For The Morning’s Joy (2015)

As I write this in July, 2017, it was around now in the summer of 2015 that I was contacted by an old friend & colleague whom I had met as an intern at the Adirondack Festival of American Music back in the mid- to late-90s (one aspect of the forthcoming post about the late Gregg Smith—stay tuned!) who is now Director of Music at University United Church of Christ in Seattle, WA.

Heidi Wyllis Blythe had commissioned a few small-scale arrangements from me before then (mostly on a fast-turnaround basis; one of my favorite working situations), but this one was a little bigger: she asked me for an original hymn tune on a text by one of her parishioners, which was to then be set for brass, choir, and organ for congregational singing. It sounded like a good offer, and one that wouldn’t be too labor-intensive.

Problem number 1 occurred when I received the text to be set: it was both non-metrical and in free verse. One can certainly construct an anthem on this basis, but not a traditional congregational hymn tune designed to accommodate multiple stanzas.

I let Heidi know what the problem was. The author turned out to be unwilling to write something metrical (let alone with a rhyme scheme), so we started casting about for an alternative text. In situations like this (all the time, really…), I prefer that the commissioner choose the text to be set. So: Heidi sent me a few possibilities; none of which rang true for us.

The last text she sent (almost with a shrug, it seemed), did the trick: Hymn to St. Cecilia by Ursula Wood Vaughan-Williams. As soon as we agreed that this was the text we’d use, we then worked out the rest of the commission conditions:

The project, by then, had turned into an anthem, so I was going to have to charge more. (No problem, as it turned out!)

Not just an anthem: a big anthem—the instrumentation went from SATB choir, brass, organ, & congregation up to SATB choir with occasional divisi, organ, & orchestra (& a not quite standard instrumentation at that: 1-1-1-1  1-2-1-1 org  timpani, bells, strings [2-2-2-2-1])

It was to be premiered October 25, 2015 (we were talking in July, 2015 at that point), meaning—

The choir parts were going to have to be available and pretty much set in stone by the beginning of September so that their choir would have the largest possible window in which to get it learned, with orchestral materials to follow ASAP—strings first, then everything else.

To make a long story short (for now), it all happened as planned.

In terms of planning the musical content, I knew immediately that the piece had to have a congregational refrain, using the first two lines of the poem: “Sing for the morning’s joy, Cecilia, sing/In words of youth and praises of the spring.” I also made an experiment out of this piece in terms of using 6-measure phrases as often as possible instead of the more customary 4-measure phrase. How successful that was, ultimately, is for others to decide (so: listen and write me and tell me what you think!), but that was hardly a primary concern in this piece’s creation.

The primary concern, of course was not only getting the choir parts completed, but also making sure I could be absolutely committed to them as they were by September of 2015! Composers always have changes of mind and heart when composing a piece—the bigger the piece, the more changes of mind and heart. That, therefore, proved to be a significant challenge.

On the other hand, the choir’s challenge was to learn said parts with no surrounding musical context. Their scores consisted only of their parts with multi-measure rests in between—no interludes, no sources for entry pitches, and no keyboard reduction of their own parts, let alone of the accompaniment—it was still being written as they were learning it!

Another month of furiously paced work went into the full score and orchestral materials—strings first, as requested (so that they could hold sectional rehearsals before dress rehearsing with the entire ensemble), followed by the organ part, woodwinds & brass, and, finally, percussion. All this on top of teaching college full-time and, at that time, chairing the college’s music department, plus the regular musical demands of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with my two synagogue choirs that September, mind you…

As I shortened the story previously: it all happened as planned, including the October 25th premiere. It was a thrill to read posts about its premiere on Facebook that evening, including the number of people who found themselves “earwormed” by the refrain—it doesn’t get much better than that!

There were a few additional surprises in this story:

It was only very late in the process that I found out that the occasion for which this work was commissioned turned out to be the 125th anniversary of University United Church of Christ in Seattle and the rededication of their newly refurbished sanctuary and organ—so it was a good thing the score included a substantive organ part.

The biggest surprise, though, was when my commissioning fee arrived in the mail—for double the agreed-upon amount! I immediately e-’d Heidi both thanking her profusely and asking how this came to be. She told me that once they saw what they were getting from me in this piece, she and the choir decided that it was worth more than the agreed-upon fee; and that they raised the additional amount in a matter of hours…How often does that happen?! I shall be eternally grateful!

The recording arrived via e-mail a few days later—what a superb performance! You may listen to it here.

Having heard the piece objectively:

There should be a larger string section when and if it is performed again

The timpani & bell parts should be included (technical/logistical problems wound up precluding their use that time)

The wind & brass parts should, perhaps, be rescored to a more conventional grouping

If I’m going to be completely honest, I need to figure out a reduced instrumentation version (or three) for this to be heard elsewhere and more often.

St. Cecilia’s feast day is November 22 every year. If you direct a choir & this piece intrigues you, tell me what sort of reduced instrumentation would work for you! (Or if the scoring as it stands works for you, that’s OK, too…)