Music compositional update, part 2

I didn’t originally set out to put this update into two parts, but I felt it necessary due to the necessity of expounding on what I did in the first part. Creativity moves as the Holy Spirit moves. And because I have received Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as my life-saving lifeline, I have the Holy Spirit in me, which I will confess that even now I forget sometimes. But He is in me and is able to do His thing when I move in obedience to Him.

A brief little catching up, due primarily to the content of my last post, but also because I need to continue to get in the habit of writing about projects that I’ve been working on, am currently working on, and anticipating working on in the future.

As a disclaimer, I must catch myself – again, part of my selfish, sinful nature hopes that by intentionally writing down as much as possible related to the music-making part of my life, it will make it easier for future historians to not only find my music (“my” music) but also any backstory to put the music in context. Selfishly, I hope to be found, if not during my lifetime, then by future generations.

As a side note to the disclaimer, it again is not necessary inherently wrong to have works attributed to my name (but glory given to God’s name) be found. The issue is the motivation of my heart in all this. One other topic I’ve been thinking about is the question of legacy, specifically what I will leave behind.

I had previously thought about expounding much, much further on this topic, but for the sake of brevity and focus, I will simply link you to this Bible passage from Matthew 24:3-31 and highlight the following focus verses below:

And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. Matthew 24:12-13, NKJV

For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened. Matthew 24:21-22, NKJV

The point is, one of the points that I am working to reframe my thinking regarding the music-making gift God has given me, in addition to specifically on doing it for His glory, is also for pointing others to Jesus, specifically those who may someday find this music. I’m not sure how close we are to the end times, but world events seem to indicate that the period of tribulation could occur soon, perhaps within my own lifetime. Like Jesus stated in Matthew 24, we don’t know when it will happen, except that it will happen, and that there will be signs to show the generation alive at the time when it does occur. Nonetheless, whatever I leave behind for others to be found, my wish is that it could be something to point people to Jesus, especially in a time when hearts will be hardened and lawlessness will abound.

With that said, here is a summary of notable projects that I have worked on (since repenting in 2019), am working on, and anticipate working on in the future, God willing:

The last bit of 2019:

Improvisation 16 November 2019. Completely instrumental, came at the end of a long day of recording song covers with a singer colleague of mine, as well as a few Classical piano pieces.

Psalms 42 & 43. An improvisation for voice and piano. The only structure I had for this was text from the two Psalms from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. This also came at the end of another long day of recording. 

2020:

Improvisation 1 February 2020. Just like from 11/16/2019, this was completely instrumental and came at the end of another long day of recording with another singer colleague of mine, plus a few Classical pieces.

Northbrook Symphony for Piano: III. Minuet - Waltz. An improvisation from 2017, I spent part of my time during the lockdowns transcribing recorded improvisations (including Psalms 42 & 43 and Improvisation 1 February 2020). This was already on one of my albums released on Bandcamp, but I had a goal of beginning to get my work copyrighted, and this included getting recorded improvisations transcribed and notated, so that I could have a copy of the work covered as well.

Our God by Matt Redman and co. This was a cover arrangement. As the COVID situation was getting real in our country, and as churches were moving exclusively online, I recorded my own arrangement of this song as a means of encouraging a few of my friends from my church at the time. This was also one of the first praise & worship songs that resonated with me as I was first returning to attending church regularly after what I call my second exile from church.

Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit. This was a cover arrangement. Recording this was inspired by a brief little riff from Improvisation 1 February 2020. Another piece of building up my faith – and that of others – while the shutdowns related to COVID were in place.

Waltz in F major. This was a piano composition arrangement/collaboration with my sweetie pie. When my love and I were first dating, our time spent together was relegated to Zoom during the peak of the COVID shutdowns. One of the many things we did together with the given constraints was collaborate on filling out the accompaniment to a musical sketch that she had written years prior.

O Holy Night. This was a cover arrangement. Similar to Our God and Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, this was another project around building up my faith. I distinctly remember recording this in June 2020, right after the protests and rioting had begun, and had observed a wide range of emotions from people that I had associated with at the time. Looking back, God used this to open my eyes and lead me to finally change churches.

Gyspy Rondo. This was a piano composition arrangement/collaboration with my sweetie pie, although to this day it is not yet completed. After the smashing collaborative success with Waltz in F major, my love had sent me photos of more musical sketches she had. I began creating the basics of the accompaniment. However, this project got waylaid due to multiple factors, including the necessity of my focusing on the career path for which I was going to return to school in the fall.

Song For My Sweetie Pie. Given how much my love loves waltzes (as do I, although maybe not quite as much as she does), I wanted to write a waltz for her as a Christmas present. Additionally, I wanted to challenge myself in the writing and structure of this composition; the result was creating phrases of “three sets of three threes” – in other words, each bar was 3 counts, each significant chord change and melodic motion was once every 3 bars, and each line was three sets of significant chord changes/melodic motions, making for a total of 9 bars (and 27 counts) per line. After that, though, I decided to make each section 4 or 8 lines. It was a lot of fun to write, and my sweetie pie loved the piece, too.

2021:

Piano Suite in B-flat major. This suite was written as a piano sonata, a suite, an exercise, a statement of faith and hope, and a gift to my love and to her family, both to encourage them during a trying time, and because they love music as well. This project began with the second movement (II. Solitude), out of a church meeting over Zoom with other Christian artists, where one of the leaders invited the group to produce art based on the word “solitude.” As I wrote what would become the second movement, and as I continued to pray, more words came: “serenity,” from which follows the third movement; “splendor,” from which follows the fourth movement; and finally, “victory,” from which follows the first movement.

I. Victory

II. Solitude

III. Serenity

IV. Splendor

Meditation and March in E-flat. This was a piano composition arrangement/collaboration with my sweetie pie, begun in 2021 and completed in 2022. This was a more successful collaboration than the Gypsy Rondo, although it still took some time for it to be completed.

Psalm 1. This is an a cappella choir piece. During my “baby Christian” days, verses 1-3 (or their equivalent from Jeremiah 17:7-8) were periodically given to me as words from the Lord or merely as encouragements (and oftentimes both!). I was also seeking to set more of God’s Word to music, particularly the Psalms. This was one such Psalm that was on my heart.

Psalm 127. This is an a cappella choir piece. I had originally written this in 2010, but I found I really didn’t like the last couple pages of it. Between not really knowing what to do with this disappointment, and focusing on other projects, I left it alone. During this time, as God had been blessing the creative juices, I finally got around to rewriting the ending, and I am much more pleased with it this time around.

Psalm 46. This is an a cappella choir piece. Coming off of having composed Psalm 1 and rewriting the ending to Psalm 127, Psalm 46 was another Psalm I had on my heart to write a piece. The pastor at my church also had recently taught about this over the course of a few of our weekly in-depth Bible studies, including pointing out the word “Selah” that occurred periodically throughout this Psalm. It gave me a great opportunity to both set this to music, as well as prayerfully figure out how to create music to lead me to reflect more on this Psalm, including those “Selah” spots that state: “stop and think about it.”

Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled. This is a congregational praise and worship piece. I had gone back through an old sketchbook from around 2014 when this sketch popped up. The text is from a few verses scattered across John 13 and 14, and the sketches needed organizing. Continuing my goal of finding more of God’s Word to set to music, going through old sketches was a fun project of rediscovering, workshopping, rearranging, and filling out areas that needed to be filled out. Sometimes, I have found that God will give me an idea to sketch out, but the finished product won’t come until later, and sometimes much later (like with Psalm 127). This will be an important item to note when I cover projects I anticipate working on.

Piano Sonata in B minor. A few years prior, I had this idea that I wanted to write two piano sonatas, one in B minor and the other in F-sharp minor. It took me a few years to finish the Piano Sonata in E-flat major, which I finally did around 2018 (I had begun the first movement in 2014), which was rewarding to have completed but frustrating to push through to get completed. That particular Sonata was my first real attempt at writing a piano sonata of any kind, and although in the intermediate years I completed both the Piano Suite in B-flat major (see above) as well as (mostly) completed another Suite (the A & B Suite, which I do not count on this list, for various reasons)… they weren’t sonatas. Plus, having learned about Sonata form in college and becoming more enamored with it as an adult, I wanted to write my own. Below, each of these movements were written in order.

I. Dance Entrance. I knew how I wanted to begin it, with the introduction section exactly as it ended up being written. The rest of the piece flowed from there. This and all movements in this Sonata were written shortly after a time of opportunity to reflect on some of the many changes that occurred in my life, as well as anticipating one change yet to come. As enumerated, this movement introduces the products of my reflections as one big bowl of soup of said reflections. A few tune fragments are also introduced here which would be fleshed out further in subsequent movements.

II. Song For My Father. This title is intentional. The music processes my reflections, fear, and ultimately a statement of faith and hope regarding my dad. Yes, I took the title from Horace Silver, but the music is entirely different. I also introduce two little tune fragments I frequently improvised upon as a young child, finally having found an appropriate place to write them out.

III. The Ever-Changing Landscape. This title too is intentional. The music processes my reflections on a friendship that may be lost. In this movement I bring in a tune that we had written together when we were kids. However, this story is intentionally left unresolved.

IV. Brisk Procession. I wanted to end this Sonata similar to how J.S. Bach often ended his Cantatas: with a chorale. I do believe Bach was saved, as it is often reflected in his music. Like in Song For My Father, I wanted to end this entire Sonata with a statement of hope; in this case, that as long as presently-unsaved sinners are still alive, they still have a shot to enter heaven upon dying, if they repent and receive Jesus as their Savior and their King.

2022:

A Wife of Noble Character (text from Proverbs 31:10-31). Inspired by several different things, including my sweetie pie’s composition Meditation and March in E-flat, plus a desire to find a way to set Proverbs 31 to text, plus her birthday was coming up, this piece came together pretty quickly. I see this as a clear example of how Psalm 37:4 can be put into action.

Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor. Please see earlier comment about my wanting to write piano sonatas in B minor and F-sharp minor. This Sonata is a current project still in progress; as of this blog post, the first three movements have been written; the fourth, titled The Honeymoon, is yet on my docket to complete. Preliminary sketches have begun for it, but I have maybe two lines written. One thing I have learned and continue to learn is that, if I am going to truly collaborate with the Most High God, then I have work with Him on this. I cannot rush the process. I just hope that I can keep up when inspiration does arrive. The titles of each of these movements are self-explanatory.

I. The Proposal. Written months before I eventually proposed to her, I did keep this as a surprise for her and for her folks to discover (since nothing else about the actual proposal was a surprise to any of them!). This piece contains a few secret messages that I had them decode. It was fun to watch them as they figured out all the messages. A couple other notes about this movement: one of my new favorite Beethoven pieces is the first movement from his “Pastoral” Piano Sonata in D major, which served as the starting inspiration point for this piece; additionally, I included yet another improvised tune fragment from childhood as one of the motifs. 

II. The Ceremony. Along with The Proposal, this movement was rather easy to write. I envisioned tremolo and stacked chords (almost like choir parts) for shaping the sonic structure of this piece.

III. The Reception. After writing my very first attempt at a jazz band piece back in 2006, I wanted for a long time to repurpose it. Once the idea to write a Sonata based on the sequence of events related to getting married, I knew that the piece (Cranberry Juice) would become The Reception. It was just a matter of how to change the format to conform to Sonata form. Thinking through how it was going to work took some time.

Minimalist Piano Sonata in B-flat minor: (I. Music That Takes Its Time). Based off a piano improvisation, I wanted to do something a little different from all the piano pieces I'd been writing exclusively in Sonata form, given my current fatigue after having written many pieces in the said structure. Also, as I was recording this, this was right around the time I returned to class after taking almost a year off. I knew I wasn't going to have the time I used to to just make music, so I approached this as kind of a cap to what I expected to be the end of a season of music-writing. In another departure to my typical form, I transcribed (and modified as I saw fit) the piece in Microsoft Excel rather than my usual Finale software program. What I wanted to experiment with this piece was combining minimalism with Sonata form, to see how much I could make a piece minimalist but still have it conform to the super-basics of the Classical genre. Given the length of this piece (at least 15 minutes?) I could easily call this one-and-done, but I'm still hoping to create maybe two more movements. The trick is, I need to do something different with the other two movements to make this interesting. More to come.

O Taste and See (text from Psalm 34:1-2,8). This is a congregational praise and worship piece. This piece was written originally sometime around 2015, finalized this year. Similar to Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled, I found this also in one of my old sketchbooks. Unlike the former piece, after running through this once or twice in my head, I felt that this piece was complete. Sometimes simpler is better.

He Cannot Deny Himself (text from 2 Timothy 2:11-13). This is an a cappella choir piece. Please see my post from earlier this week for more information. Musically, this was another one of those “keep it simple” pieces. I set this music in a kind of hymn-style arrangement, so as to focus on the words. The words from this passage hit me powerfully, ministering to my heart regarding some things, and as such, I wanted the piece to bring the words to the forefront with the music following what the words were connoting. One cool thing that I will boast about in this piece (because God has given these different inspirations to me) is that this music, as simple as it is, combines different quirks from vastly different musical traditions. My guess is something precisely like this has never been done before. If so, that’s pretty cool.

Anticipated projects will come in a future post.