Aus der Tiefe / "Heinlein" / "Forty Days and Forty Nights" is a hymn I've heard and played at many Ash Wednesday and First-Sunday-of-Lent services. Five years ago, I wrote this little prelude using a style I was experimenting with at the time, a very simple two-part setting. I also wrote a final verse to go with it. Both are attached here.
A few notes about the prelude. The accompanying voice was composed against the choral then simply set twice, once without the theme and then once with. The effect is intended to be meditative, calm, and stark. I've written a few other preludes in this style and without exception those in a bleaker character work far better than those intended to introduce more uplifting hymns - a realization that may be one of the least surprising revelations in my years of composing.
Prelude on "Aus der Tiefe" by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The final verse I wrote puts the melody squarely in the pedals, and calls for a strong solo in the left hand, perhaps even a reed if your registration philosophy allows for it, and the agility to cross hands. Looking at it from five years later, it may be easier to play the solo in the right hand... Ah well.
Nothing overly radical in terms of harmonic language; I was then and remain now pretty solidly entrenched in the warm sounds of the late nineteenth century.
Final verse: "Aus der Tiefe" by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
So I'm thinking a prelude-and-final-verse treatment of a hymn every week. That might be fun. And in between Sundays, some other music, hither and yon.
PDFs:
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