Postlude on Hyfrydol: new year, new projects

Well! it's 2017 now.

Time to get back to the weekly work. New year, new project. Or, rather, getting going on an old project that was started but never followed through.

Last summer I got married (whoo!) and last fall I got very, very busy (also whoo!) such that I just didn't have the drive to continue my weekly hymn-based works. So that's my 2017 project - one a week, based on a hymn tune.

I have Richard Crossman to thank for his generous donation and his suggestion of using Hyfrydol. If you have a hymn tune you'd like to see given a treatment, let me know - and if you want to support my work in doing so, there's a link at the bottom of the post to my GoFundMe page. I'm still getting ready to start my third book of 24 free works, and a little extra money goes a long way towards making that happen!

So here's the Postlude on Hyfrydol (Click on this link for a PDF):

All the best to all in the new year!

Postlude on Hyfrydol 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! Help me fund my third book of free preludes!

Out with 2016, in with 2017

New plans for the new year. After the wedding, honeymoon, and subsequently crazy fall and winter, I'm back to it. Don't count me out yet!

First new tune harmonization of 2017! (click here for a downloadable PDF)

The best of the new year to all friends, colleagues and admirers!

- Mike

This harmonization 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!

Back in to the swing!

So. I have two new projects underway.

I'm vlogging!

My first NaNoWriMo project vlog (more below), followed by my second:



So there's also my NaNoWriMo project: a symphony for organ.

I detail the rules for this project in my first vlog post, but to summarize, I'm writing a

• multi-movement
• 15-30 minute
• solo organ
• motivically unified

symphony in the span of thirty days.

And in the three four days since the month started... I have a few sketches, and a full-bore theme for variations:

Not a bad start, I think, all told!

More to come as I do more. I haven't abandoned my other projects, just busy with other other projects and in recovery from a wedding and a vacation. Soon enough, I'll be back at it.

Cheers!

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

Prelude recording #3

After a week-long illness followed by much business, I've lost a lot of ground on things I want to do. So before a weekend away, I was able to record the third Prelude:

The original post for this prelude is here!

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

Prelude recordings - #1 and #2

I've begun recording my preludes!

The first two are here:

And here:

And the table of contents will be updated with links as I go!

Reminder: it's supporters that can make things like this much easier for me to do. GoFundMe is a great way to back me for making recordings and writing music!

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

Hymn Tune Preludes #2 - St. Petersburg

So after last week's longer, more meditative piece, this week is a much shorter, more diatonic, and perhaps more functional work.

My writing project led me to open a hymnal and the first hymn I liked, I set. So this week, we get St. Petersburg, a Prelude (or suitable Introduction) thereupon.

Short, sweet, fun, and a bit tricky. Here's the score!

PDF can be found over here!

So this piece consists of a little pattern that the right hand plays three times over, derived from the hymn, which accompanies the tune in the left hand. In the video I use the softer Swell (coupled to the Pedal, as well) with 8, 4, 2, and Nasat, alongside the Great principle chorus up to the Mixture, which seems to give a nice, bright sound. I'd definitely use this to introduce the hymn, given the chance - why not? It can be used to set the pace, the tonality, and make everyone aware of the familiar tune!

If you would like to hear me try to tackle a hymn tune of your choosing, simply click the link below and send me a small donation towards my continued work. I'd love to hear from you and get some ideas for what people might like to hear from me!

Until next week.

Prelude on St. Petersburg 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!

A New Project: Hymn Tune Preludes... #1 - Down Ampney

So after a brief hiatus while I was busy preparing for concerts and writing things for a wedding and playing arrangements of Beethoven and generally being a musician and working to get recordings made... and looking at that, that looks like a lot more work than it felt like... anyway! After the aforementioned brief haitus, I've started to make recordings. I recorded the Prelude in C, and am working on more preludes.

And I needed a writing project.

For those that don't know, I'm getting married in August, which is occupying a lot of time right now, which is fine and wonderful, believe me! But it means that until that craziness is over, I don't want to start in on a weekly project with a defined end-date (no set of 24, in other words) and meanwhile, I needed something to fill in for the hymn tune project. So I decided to combine preludes with hymn tunes and start in on a project I hope people will find useful.

And to go with that - I was able to record it.

Here's a PDF for the discerning organist.

The dedication reads For Tom, "Cathedral Cadence" and all. My friend Tom Packham is a fan of what he calls a "Cathedral Cadence" as an extension at the end of a hymn - a slide up a semitone over a pedal point and back down, So this whole work makes much use of that idea, even opening (and, of course, ending) with E-flat over D.

So I also want to announce a new donation incentive. Give me money, and you can name a tune for me to write a work on and record. Further details will be coming as I figure out a good way to work it, but give me money, and I'll take hymn tune requests! Caveats exist - the tune must be in the public domain (in Canada) and must be something that's reasonably workable and usable. I do enjoy obscurities but there are limits!

Until next week.

Meditation on Down Ampney 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!