Category: Great Composers

Writing Music in a Vacuum

9/10/2025

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is one of the most revered composers of all time. His music is still being studied, played, and re-arranged these many centuries later. The organist at Church played a beautiful postlude last Sunday that I presumed was JS Bach because I enjoyed it so much. (But in case I was wrong, I went up to ask him to confirm.) Listening to the music of Bach always makes me feel uplifted. It is obvious to me that his musical ideas came from a brain infinitely smarter than mine, and yet he always gave thanks for and dedicated his music to God. Such humility.

I remember studying about Bach in college. One of the things that really impressed me about his genius was how he worked under pressure. For years, he had to produce something new each week to be performed in the next Sunday's services. We were told that he would go into his studio and then into his own musical thoughts. He would spend Monday and maybe Tuesday writing down those thoughts. Then he would give instructions to the copyists (mostly his own children) to get the music prepared for the choir and/or musicians for their Thursday rehearsals. Amazing!!!

Then, in my own sophomoric thoughts, I'd say to myself, "Well, he had a reason to write and musicians to write for. That's why he could write so fast..."

Then I'd have to reprimand myself. Where, I do believe it is true that having a reason to write gives a composer purpose, that doesn't make it any easier. Still, I tell myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of genius? (sigh) Maybe if I just studied Bach more..."

There have been times in my life when I was a Choir Director and felt obliged to write new music quite often. It was indeed easier for me to write for those 25-30 voices that I knew so well and the pianist that I knew was quite competent. Then there were the times I had vocal or piano students who needed something rather specific for some recital or school performance. Or there was an opportunity to write a new Children's Musical that would be performed in a few months. Having the reason to write surely gave me the impetus to write.

If left solely up to myself, I find it difficult to write in a vacuum. I need a few parameters to get started --- such as "who will be performing?" "how many performers?" "what style?" "what topic?" "what instruments" "what occasion"... and the list goes on. This is when having a built-in reason like having students or a choir ready to perform your work is so motivating.

There was a time though when I wrote purely for myself. I had a desire to write a collection of sacred solos for high voice that I could sing. So, I set out to create some hymn arrangements and original songs on sacred and scriptural texts that suited my personal tastes and abilities. But when it came time to record them to go out with the publication, I decided to share the spotlight.

This was probably the one time I was able to write music by filling the vacuum myself. I came up with the ideas and reasons with just the flicker of hope that these musical creations would someday be performed by other singers somewhere out there...

The Praiseworthy Singer Volume 14
The Praiseworthy Singer Volume 15

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Too Dramatic for Worship Service?

5/17/2023

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When is a song -- solo, small ensemble, or choral piece -- deemed too dramatic or long for Sacrament Meeting?

I noticed a thread going around about this question. They were talking about having a professional singer sing "O Divine Redeemer" by Charles Gounod for Stake Conference. There was an opinion that it was too long and too dramatic for use in that service even though it was expressly requested by the Stake President.

Years ago, I sang that piece at least once a year for some worship service or another. Always by request. I think nowadays that the "public" is used to very simple Christian "pop" songs that don't take too much preparation or ability to perform. On the other hand, "O Divine Redeemer" takes a lot of skill and musicianship not to mention a voice with an expanded range to be able to sing it well. If done well, it is beautiful and powerful. If done poorly, it is very painful to listen to.

Yes, that piece is dramatic and yes it is over 3:00 minutes long. Yet, if it is sung well, it is a masterful sermon and testimony served with gorgeous music! Too bad that we have fewer and fewer trained singers and accompanists who could pull off a good performance of such a magnificent piece.

As far as it being too dramatic for Conference goes, it doesn't seem any more dramatic than singing "Master the Tempest is Raging," "I Stand All Amazed," or "I Know that My Redeemer Lives."

As far as it being too long? It isn't longer than singing "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" -- all 7 verses, or even shortened to only 4 verses.

I for one, would rather hear a beautiful rendition of "O Divine Redeemer" than any number of the Christian "pop" songs we hear so often, usually done poorly.

Another dramatic hymn we sing regularly is "The Lord Is My Light." This has been a favorite hymn of mine since the day I heard my uncle John Thompson give a testimony about it, then sing it. He was visiting our ward one Sunday while I was in high school. He had the most marvelous heroic tenor voice. This arrangement is a salute to my wonderful uncle John who always said that some of the most powerful sermons are taught through sacred songs and hymns.

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Style Changes

2/17/2023

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Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750

My daughter and I like to play a listening game in the early mornings when I drive her to the train station. We listen to the music and try to guess what style period it belongs to. Some are very easy to determine because we already know the piece or can recognized a famous composer's style such as Bach or Mozart or Beethoven. But sometimes we are completely stumped.

Yesterday a piece was playing (of course we turned on the radio after it had been introduced by the announcer) that had a lot of Baroque characteristics, but the instruments used and the phrasings made it seem wrong for that period. Besides, some of the articulations were very modern. Happily our guesses were validated because it was a French Impressionist composer from the late 19th century who had made an arrangement of a Baroque composer's themes.

Nearly every composer learns by studying and using techniques and ideas from previous style periods, at least to start out. Then, as they grow their own skills, and listen to music by contemporaries, they develop their own style characteristics. Then there are those composers who borrow from so many styles and mix and match ideas from many sources, that some pieces sound rather befuddled. That's when "NEO" is applied to their work. For example, if a composition from the 20th century hearkens back to the Classical period it is then called NeoClassicism, and so forth.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

But how does a composer truly become an original? I'm sure that Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven didn't analyze their own music and consciously say to themselves "I think I'll create a completely new STYLE PERIOD in music today." They may have wanted to push the envelope of music in their day, but I doubt that they worried about how musicologists would categorize their music for future generations. I think Genius plays a big role in whether a composer becomes a transitional figure or not.

Then there are Church Musicians, people who compose for worship services. Those composers have a difficult job because they need to please the worshippers more than themselves. People like what they know. Older people in particular dislike CHANGE. They feel comfort in styles that are familiar in a sacred way. Changes in adopting newer musical idioms for worship services are SLOW in coming, but they do come. Older generations eventually die off. That's partially why we get new hymnals and Children's Songbooks.

But who's to say when adopting newer styles are good or not? When popular styles are used for worship is it because that's the only style of music the song writers or congregants know? I for one am troubled when I hear the Primary children belt out loudly singing a very sacred lyric about the Savior's atonement to a pop power ballad. When the focus of the singing is about how the performer is performing and not about WORSHIP, I cringe. To me that has the same effect as scraping on a chalkboard. (Oh, that's right, we don't do chalkboards anymore.) But that's also true of any performance -- be it Operatic, Classical, Contemporary, Modern, World, Pop, and the list goes on.

True worship can be offered in any STYLE, but only when done intentionally. For that to happen, the performers must think less of themselves and more of giving their offering to God.

For example, here's a piece that could potentially focus more attention on itself than was intended. This is an arrangement of a newer LDS hymn "From Homes of Saints Glad Songs Arise" SATB. It has been given a bit of a lilt by lopping off an eight note every so often. Some people might get mixed up trying to count this one. That was not the intent. The intent was to propel the message forward with a joyful lift. The syncopations should be light in the first two verses, then when the beats become regular 4/4 near the end, the meaning is emphasized and powerful. Enjoy!

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Song of Ultimate Longing

11/1/2022

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While listening to a podcast a few weeks back, I heard a statistic that was new to me, but not altogether surprising. The hosts were talking about the greatest song of the 20th Century. The teaser was that this song was voted the most influential song on many lists by people of all walks of life and across a broad swath of the population. They went on talking but did not reveal the song until they had given a lot of backstory.

That definitely got me thinking. From the clues, I guessed that the song must have been used in a movie. It must have been a ballad. It must have been appealing on many levels, but not a love song. Hmm...

From more of the backstory details I learned that it was written just prior to WWII and the songwriters were influenced by the terrible happenings to the Jews in Europe. That little tidbit was all I needed. I guessed that the song was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg.

I actually learned this song not from watching the movie "The Wizard of Oz" or hearing Judy Garland's performance. I learned it by hearing my mother sing it. Carolyn Thompson Lee had a clear, lyrical high soprano voice. When she sang the octave jump in the modulation, she sang way above the staff to a high B flat. Since then, I counted that song as my mother's legacy and I wanted more than ever to be able to sing it the way she did!

The arrangement my mother sang was created for her by famed composer Crawford Gates. I doubt if he ever wrote it down. He just played it on the piano with the many flourishes that an accomplished pianist can do. When my mother was in college, she and a baritone often went on little tours singing Professor Gates' songs to help advertise his new musical "Promised Valley." At the end of the shows as a bonus he had her sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Her rendition always brought thunderous applause.

When I was a little girl I heard my mother singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" while accompanying herself or by having her sister play it for her. I never, ever saw them use actual sheet music either. Years later, my aunt Janie Thompson made a piano recording of the accompaniment for me to use whenever I got a chance to sing it. This was the perfect choice to sing on almost any program because people are always longing for a better world or better situation.

But when once I had the opportunity to sing it, but I couldn't use the recording but I did have an accompanist, I decided to write the music down for her to play (without the fancy flourishes). Yeah, I had to commit the arrangement to manuscript or it could be lost forever.

“It might not seem obvious that a song performed by a young girl at the beginning of a fantasy movie would take on a life of its own,” said Walter Frisch, a professor of music whose new book, Arlen and Harburg’s Over the Rainbow, traces the work’s history. One factor of the song’s appeal that Frisch cites is the universality of a childhood desire to get away or escape. “The song’s mix of hope and anxiety has allowed people to read into it their own concerns,” he said, noting that the lyrics are general enough that one would not know the singer was standing in a farmyard with her dog.

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is No. 1 on my list of all-time greatest songs of the 20th Century, too.

PS I just located this amazing clip of my mother singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." In about 1970, our family did a big show celebrating my Thompson Grandparents' 50th Golden Wedding Anniversary. My Aunt Janie gave the introduction and also accompanied my mother singing. This is such a treasure!

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Variety and Originality in Sacred Music

8/14/2022

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A composer may have a musical style that makes him or her immediately recognizable. That may or may not be a good thing. The great composers are recognized for their greatness even if they regularly use signature devices, but also because they show great ORIGINALITY. Other composers may be so prolific that their music is instantly recognizable because it all sounds about the same.

Ah, you may say, "But there are only 12 chromatic notes. How original can a person's music really get?"

Fortunately there are many other devices that provide variety. RHYTHM, HARMONY, TEMPO, INSTRUMENTAL COLORS, CULTURAL FLAVORS are a few of these devices. Over the years, composers have constantly been developing new STYLE characteristics. Because many composers within a certain time period tended to gravitate to using similar characteristics and even outright copied each other's techniques, musicologists have divided these into stylistic time periods. Some major ones reflected many of the artistic and architectural modes of their day such as Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, 20th Century, and so on. That is not even mentioning the many and varied Popular and Folk styles that have developed over the centuries.

While it is generally assumed that Church Music is slower to adapt and change to the most current musical styles, there may be good reason for that. Often composers get so excited about writing in new and different ways that they forget who they are writing for. (Older people, for example, do not like fast or drastic changes of any kind.) So, stylistic changes in Sacred Music come about more slowly.

Variety is great in Sacred Music, provided that it supports the spiritual message. The musical writing should support the message of the text and not pull undue focus to itself. Bearing testimony of the Savior and His teachings and inviting the Spirit are the most important elements. The musical compositional style should suit these parameters.

And yet, using the same melodic motives, or rhythmic patterns in the accompaniment, or the same chord progressions over and over can get old pretty quickly. There are so many options to choose from and styles to be influenced by that composers should have no trouble finding inspiration to create great Sacred Music.

Here's a little Christmas piece influenced highly by music of many great composers. Enjoy "Shepherds Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep" for SATB, Baritone Soloist and Piano.

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Happy 90th Birthday John Williams!

2/9/2022

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“Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“Faster, Higher, Stronger”) Every time I sang these words from John Williams' "Call of the Champions," I felt I had a legitimate link to the famous composer. After all, he wrote that piece specifically for the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square to perform at the Opening Ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

John Williams is a legend in his own time. His music is known and loved by people all over the world. His REACH is astounding! His music has the power to create memories and pull them back whenever people hear his music again. His music has brought dinosaurs to life, made bicycles fly, made the FORCE real, helped heroes win battles, made Christmas magical, and still makes people afraid of sharks with two single notes.

In July 1977, I remember standing in an extremely long line winding around a couple of city blocks on a hot, humid night in Alexandria, Virginia trying to explain to my Dad how much he would enjoy seeing "Star Wars." I tried to sing him what I remembered from the title theme. I wanted him to have the same kind of powerful memory from seeing "Star Wars" that I had after seeing it the week before in Salt Lake City, Utah. When I think about or hear this music, I can instantly feel, see, hear, smell, taste, and almost touch those memories from back in 1977. That music is so powerful to me.

Fall 1977 was the start of my last year in the Music Department at BYU. As part of my studies, I worked on some modern avant garde music. I actually was assigned as a vocalist to one of the composer lab classes. Student composers were to demonstrate proficiency in writing in the various styles they were studying.  My job was to sight-sing their new experimental music. I was a good sight-singer, so I was valuable to the lab, but I tended to scratch my head at some of the antics they made me do. None of those pieces would be appreciated beyond music elitist circles, I was absolutely sure. None would have the REACH and POWER that the film and concert music of John Williams would.

If I could, I would certainly thank John Williams personally for the impact his music has had in my life. I am so grateful that I got to sing several great John Williams pieces as a member of the Tabernacle Choir. Such a thrill to think I have a legitimate link to my musical idol! Happy 90th Birthday, sir!

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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

9/28/2021

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John Rutter recently did a podcast about the 10 questions he gets asked the most. He is a world renowned British composer who is probably best known for his choral works. I was fascinated by those 10 questions as well as his answers. Some were "did you always know you wanted to be a composer?" or "when did you get your first big break?" or "what advice would you give to young composers?" He was very gracious in his answers. I am sure he always tries to give his questioners good information and a lot of encouragement.

But he talked about two things the most.

1. Develop your gift. You either have the gift to compose music or you don't. It cannot be taught. The musical language can be taught, but the genius to create music is a gift. So, do the work to find out if you have the gift.

2. Be true to your gift. Develop a solid core of belief in yourself no matter the criticism. Your music might not be in the popular style of the day or be hailed by the masses. But it needs to be truthful to you. Even if there is criticism, genius will always find an audience.

Composers nowadays have many opportunities to get their music heard or performed - self-publishing, the internet, social media, etc. When he was young, there was just one way: get a contract with a big publisher. Composers today are lucky.

He encourages new composers to do everything in their power to get their music performed, even if it is just rounding up friends for a read-through. Nowadays, composers use notation programs that can playback their scores with amazing fidelity. They can even record their music by themselves through the miracle of multitrack recording. (No friends required, but it's seriously more fun in a group.)

John Rutter says that although he enjoys writing for orchestra, he always feels that when he writes for instruments, he is just a guest at the table. But when he writes choral music, he is home. He encourages all composers to write what feels like home to them.

"Where do you get your inspiration?" He says that all composers are standing on the shoulders of giants. There is no shame in borrowing (or even stealing) ideas from the master composers to get started.

Wow! I feel better now.

One of my friends told me that I must have been singing a John Rutter piece when I composed this choral "The Keystone of Our Faith." She said I may have borrowed some of his ideas for this one. Maybe... I was just humbled to be compared to John Rutter!

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Respecting Beethoven

2/5/2021

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Singing the glorious last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as part of the Tabernacle Choir will remain one of the highlights of my life. In my college years, I studied the works of Beethoven as part of the Music history modules, but always came away not really able to understand or give his music the respect it deserves. For me, his music was very difficult to perform and took great exertion to master. I admit, my skills were probably lacking and that is the bigger reason why I only embraced certain of Beethoven's works.

After listening to a very moving podcast about Beethoven's life and works, I came away better able to understand the man and the greatness of his music. In Music History courses, students are exposed mainly to just the few musicians who played pivotal roles in pushing the parameters of music. Three Germanic composers, Bach (1685-1750), and Haydn (1732-1809), and Mozart (1756-1791), are recognized as TRANSITIONAL FIGURES because of their originality, genius and sheer output. Bach basically defined the Baroque period in Music, however many of his compositions pushed the accepted boundaries of that era. Haydn's music defined the new, clean, well-ordered style of the Classical Period. Mozart lived during the Classical age, but defied the rules and pushed towards more freedom of expression and emotional content. He helped transition music into the age of Romanticism, a style period that Beethoven matured in and further defined through his genius and originality.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) grew up studying the works of the masters, and even met both Mozart and Haydn in Vienna. He actually studied for a time with Papa Haydn. Beethoven had the desire to master and even go beyond the performance capabilities and compositions of these masters. He witnessed the demise of the "Court Composer" Patron system (like Haydn) to the new commercial model of the "freelance musician" (like Mozart). Beethoven had equal hard luck with both systems.

After learning about all of Beethoven's hard luck throughout his life from family problems, to romantic heart-aches, from sickness to total deafness, it is hard to imagine how this tortured man could create such sublime music. Through all of his difficulties, though, he still managed to continue his faith in God. In fact, Beethoven covenanted with Him to continue to create music for as long as he was able to use his God-given gift. How truly inspirational!

I think I respect Beethoven and his music better now.

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Writing Music in a Vacuum

Too Dramatic for Worship Service?

Style Changes

Song of Ultimate Longing

Variety and Originality in Sacred Music

Happy 90th Birthday John Williams!

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Respecting Beethoven

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