Meditation on Wondrous Love - new project going slower than anticipated

All it took to get me back in to things was a donation. How about that?

Naw, I'm kidding. I've been busy with a bunch of other projects, mainly performing ones, and I just haven't been on the ball regarding my weekly writing plans. I'll get back to it eventually... I hope! I may even catch up on the few weeks I've missed.

So! first of all, I need to send out a gigantic Thank You to Carson Cooman, who

- gave generously to support my ongoing projects (third weekly prelude book starting soon!)

- suggested the tune to write a prelude on; and

- mentioned in passing an interest in single-manual, small-pedal-compass organs, providing an interesting creative challenge for writing this work.

So here, then, without further ado, is the Meditation on "Wondrous Love" (click for downloadable PDF) - just in time for Lent, no less!

So thanks again to Carson, and hopefully I'll have more in the pipeline shortly!

Mike

Meditation on Wondrous Love by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Your donations can help me keep writing these! Click to feed a composer!

Five years old this year - A Simple Style

A couple from the archive, a little bit of long-distance.

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:

Prelude

Final Verse

Beach Spring meditation

It's too late to be posting Christmas music. So I won't. I'll save that for next September or some such.

Instead, I'm still in the process of revisiting some old material. Here's one specifically for small organs, using a 4' stop in the upper registers to imitate the sound of mutations and mixtures. For those who don't play the organ and don't understand the latter half of that sentence... I really can't help you with this one. There will be more comprehensible things on the way, I'm sure.

Mind's a bit mush today. I'm pretty sure I'm fighting a cold, and I'm definitely certain that a week of organ tuning is not especially good for the body. Fun, but a bit rough when you're not used to it.

So without further ado, Meditation on Beach Spring. Hope you have big hands. If you'd rather a PDF, contact me.

Meditation on Beach Spring by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
"Beach Spring" melody from The Sacred Harp, publ. 1844