Subject: Lord, Thy Church on Earth Is Seeking, by Aaron Giles, words by Hugh Braham Sherlock
This composition started out as another Music Theory composition project, this time focused on writing a song in the 32-bar American Song Form (AABA).
Category: Composition Notebook
Composition Notebook: March 2015
Subject: When the Wedding Became a Marriage, by Aaron Giles, words by Vera Giles
The origin of this one came from a conversation I had with my wife about how there were tons of songs about Mary but almost nothing about Joseph. We came up with a couple: Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine obviously, and The Cherry Tree Carol. But not really much else.
Then she mentioned that she had written a poem a while back about Joseph, and I thought maybe I could work it into a composition.
Composition Notebook: February 2015
Subject: Sanctus, by Aaron Giles
Woohoo! My first original composition.
It started off as a composition project for my Music Theory class, which meant that it had some constraints on it. I’m not yet sure whether working under constraints is good or bad, but in this case I think it worked out well.
Composition Notebook: January 2015
Subject: SATB + descant harmonization of Ecce, Deus by Alfred E. Fedak.
Interestingly, I did not first encounter this hymn tune in its original form. Instead, the music was set to a different text (“Mary Heard the Angel’s Blessing”) and published in Voices, Found, a supplemental hymnal that focuses on texts written by women.
I gravitated to this piece because we elected to sing it in Advent, and it was in a minor key. Personally, I love minor key Advent/Christmas music, and also really loved the 3/4 lilt of this relatively simple tune.
Composition Notebook: December 2014
Subject: SATB arrangement of The Face of Christ, originally written by Susan E. Bloomfield.
So in the time leading up to Advent this year, we were handed this simple piece to sing as our gospel acclimation (if you visit the link above, you can download the lead sheet, at least as of the time of this post). I think the idea was to choose something that both our choir and our praise band could sing, to create continuity between two services that typically have vastly different music.