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Gospel hymn by Anthony J. Showalter in 1887. I'm putting it with the shaped-note playlist because Showalter was born in Rockingham County (in 1858, in the part that's now West Virginia) and studied at a young age with some shaped-note people and attended the Ruebush-Kieffer school in Dayton, Va. (and several others). Started and owned music publishing companies, wrote books on harmony and compo...

Text from Isaac Watts ("The Nativity of Christ" in Horae Lyrica, 1707) and tune from William Billings in his first book, The New England Psalm Singer (1770). Arranged and sung by Jeremy Nafziger. Art, all with Creative Commons licenses: Rocky Landscape with Sleeping Shepherd (Philip Henirch Dunker, Metropolitan Museum of Art); Shepherds and Sheep (David Teniers the Younger, Metropolitan Museum ...

For Easter 2024. By New England composer Amos Bull (1744-1825), who called the tune MiddleTOWN. The Harmonia Sacra Legacy edition puts this one in the "Resurrection" section of the topical index, but I think the Charles Wesley text is more Ascension than Easter. No matter. Harmonia Sacra, for some reason, also made Bull's original worse, a few more boring harmonies, and a strange three-part sec...

For Palm Sunday, a different kind of procession (but still with a mention of palms). Jacob French (1754-1817) was a student of William Billings, singing master, and composer. His Farewell Anthem is in Harmonia Sacra (and other shaped-note hymnals). Text straight out of Revelation. The image is an Armenian "Apocalypse of St. John" from 1368, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tune by Lucius Chapin from Harmony Sacra and other sources. Words by John Newton (his title: "I Will Trust and Not Be Afraid"). Couldn't decide if this is a fast tune or a slow one, so I did it three ways. (The original/Wyeth's Repository version has more syncopation, which makes me think folk tune speed.) There's a sort of chorale thing I wrote on verse 3, and the straight Harmonia Sacra versi...

For Laetare Sunday, I suppose. Tune by Bartholomew Brown, 1792, an early American lawyer, musician, and tunebook compiler in Boston. I found it in Wyeth's Repository, Kentucky Harmony, and Sacred Harp, all with Watts' familiar "Marching to Zion." Except the only verse printed is Watts' third verse and fourth verse. I kept the fourth verse as a chorus (the fuguing part) and used verses one and t...

Classic hymn text by William Cowper (1731-1800) (full title: “Light Shining out of Darkness). And really lovely tune by Alexander Gillet (1749-1826) of Connecticut. But this, to me, comes from the stunning last piece in Alice Parker’s Melodious Accord, a cantata of a dozen or so Harmonia Sacra songs for chorus, brass, and harp (and congregation, in this piece). In all these Harmonia Sacra tune ...

Lent 2024. This is sort of a folk tune that Ananais Davisson, in Kentucky Harmony (1816), attributes to Capt. Robert Boyd, one of several “gentleman teachers in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky” from whom he obtained songs. The same year, Joseph Funk, in his all-German tunebook, used Salvation with a German text from the 1600s. Funk then included Salvation, with the same text that Davisson use...

Words by Aldine S. Kieffer, who carried on the Funk music business and expanded it, and wrote dozens of hymns and poems. Music by Benjamin Unseld, c. 1877. This one is for Halloween, in a way. Kieffer was set to marry Sally Clay, but instead left to fight in the Civil War. Sally married another in his absence. They met by chance years later, and made arrangements that whichever of them died fir...

Poem by Emily Dickinson, another setting by me.

Poem by Emily Dickinson, set for 8-part chorus. This is such a wise and gorgeous text.

For Easter 2023. Music by James Leach (d. 1798) of Lancashire; he has two tunes in Harmonia Sacra, but this one is sort of an anthem for choir and orchestra. I did several of his songs this Lent. The text, by Charles Wesley, isn't exactly Easter, but it isn't not Easter, either. The tune is named for the biblically obscure concubine of one of Abraham's brother. No idea. I wrote the instrument p...

For Palm Sunday 2023. Music by Johann Nageli (Swiss), via Lowell Mason (Boston) in an 1832 collection. Slightly different version used here from Harmonia Sacra (starting with the third edition, 1842). Text by Samuel Francis Smith (also Boston), 1832. I wrote the hosanna parts and the tiny fugue in the middle. Photos and videos from Pexels users JMarc Sire, Saulo Zayas, Allec Gomes, Jess Baily D...

For Lent 2023. Harmonia Sacra tune, composer unknown and it doesn't show up in the Hymn Tune Index, either. Kind of a typical minor 2/2 psalm tune. Text by John Newton. I included a few stanzas not in Harmonia Sacra (for six in total) and rearranged the order to go, roughly, from more sinful to less, and then arranged the music to go from messy and complicated to simple, with a faster 3/4 versi...

Canaan

Calvary (Leach)

Egypt

Salford

Pisgah

Wiltshire

Old Foster (While shepherds watched...)

GEORGIA (Hark, what news the angels bring)

Anthem from Luke

Singers Glen, an opera by Alice Parker

Masters in This Hall

I Saw Three Ships

GERMANY and how it got here

Carr's Lane

Hosanna, loud hosanna