July 1 - July 16 - Composition 1 - for choir - ATB

Preston and I attended the Gentlemen of St. John's choir dinner, basically that is the men who are in the choir (not the boys). The formal dinner was on Sunday June 29th. It was a really fun evening, and through this I was told that they would be happy to sing one of my pieces, as long as it was for only the men (ATB - Alto, Tenor, Bass). So, not wanting to miss an opportunity like this I wrote a choir piece for the Gents based on a prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Of course Preston was the one who suggested I look at the poems and Prayers of Bonhoeffer. The prayer I used was written while he was in Prison:

Lord Jesus Christ

you were poor and miserable, imprisoned and abandoned as I am.

You know all human need,

you remain with me when no human being stands by me,

you do not forget me and you seek me,

you want me to recognize you and turn back to you.

Lord, I hear your call and follow

Help me!

I finished the piece on July 16th and sent it to them. They will probably work on it sometime in the fall.

Because all of that was in the past, it seems so easy and simple that I wrote a piece in 2 weeks. It was not an easy piece for me to write. It took me a week to decide the text, halfway through I decided I should learn Sibelius (new music program, because that is what everyone here uses instead of Finale) and I wondered if I really was a composer... I found it really hard to write. I finally managed to move forward by composing the outline of the piece on graph paper. Here is the first page:

The graphing helped and I often find graphing a piece is a good way to keep my overall structure and musical goals clear. But I think most of my struggles came because I needed to get back into my composition frame of mind. Thankfully I have a whole year in which I can stay in this space. We'll see how it goes...