Hymn-A-Week 30 - Last of the year!

Thirty hymns of 2015 are available for free at this link!

A friend of mine, looking through my hymn tunes, asked me if I ever had a hymn text in mind when I wrote these. Given that this is being published Christmas week (and that Thursday is Christmas Eve, hence the early publication), I decided I would approach this one with a definite Christmas text in mind.

So here is a new tune for Away In A Manger, which already has about a quadrillion tunes, so what's one more?

This is the last hymn tune I will write this year, since I'll be on vacation next week! But back in to the swing of things for 2016. Happy holiday season and a Merry 2016 to all readers!

Business stuff!

This Hymn 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!

Voluntary in G Minor

Music for one hand? (link to the PDF)

Of my 24 Preludes, the one that's probably my favourite is #12 in F Minor, which is just a long string of notes. This is written in a similar vein, in a toccata style, not quite as fast but not slow either. And as I demonstrated when I played the F Minor, the fact that it's one line of music doesn't mean that it has to be handled by one hand; there are a dozen different ways that this one could be divided between two hands.

One of the reasons for the weekly preludes (and now voluntaries) is to stretch my compositional imagination and technique, not just the harmonic and melodic language I use but also textures and structural ideas. There's a tendency to get bogged down in one way of expressing something, and as I look back over the thirty pieces I've written since May, I think I've managed to avoid the pigeonhole and have produced a wide variety of works. Are they all good? Probably not. But they're all representative of me reaching for something new in that moment in time. And even if they're not all good, some of them are, and I'm working to suss out what works about those and what doesn't about others.

In the meantime, all the best of the season to you and yours; happy organing, and we'll pick this thread up again in the 2016! I'm taking two weeks off from preludes for the holidays.

Voluntary in G Minor by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I'm now on GoFundMe! You can support my third book of short organ works from here.

Hymn-A-Week 29

I thought it was time for another long one. Despite being the busy season, there was nothing stopping me this morning from writing a complex, double-long-metre tune in an obscure key. So I did.

I got my first GoFundMe donation this week! Thanks to {anonymous}, who wished to remain nameless for {reasons}. I feel like a professional!

Possibility of taking next week off from writing is high, but not 100%. Next Thursday is Christmas Eve, after all.

End credits!

This Hymn 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!

Voluntary in B-flat Major

So. A trio. (Link to the PDF)

You'll need a thirty-note pedalboard - or not. Octave shifts are fine.

In the midst of this Christmas season, as I prepare for a big choir concert and to play a major Mozart piano concerto (on the organ, with a bunch of flute players) in addition to all the other work that comes at Christmas, I'm suffering a right-shoulder rotator-cuff injury. Not to mention general exhaustion and tiredness. Quite fun. So I thought I'd write a little fugue in the trio style because it seemed like the thing to do.

I'm still writing! Because writing is a lot of fun for me. So while this little voluntary occupied me for a while, both walking and writing, I was also relaxing. Napping, watching the archives of the Brothers Green, and putting virtual notes on virtual paper.

I'm going to try for two more this year. Two weeks from today is Christmas Day, and I may skip that week (or just do it on the 26th) for obvious reasons. Three weeks from today is, well, next year, but I will also be out of town and away from the office, so if I don't prepare something ahead of time, I won't have something for January first! (who knows?)

End blog post!

Voluntary in B-flat Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I'm now on GoFundMe! You can support my third book of short organ works from here.

Hymn-A-Week 28

Here's where you can find my GoFundMe page!

A little format change experiment - leading with the music!

Yesterday, between performances, while I was out for a walk, I started to have pain in my right arm. Haven't seen the doctor yet (shortly) but it's a little worrying given that the Christmas season isn't over yet! And I have a Mozart piano concerto to play immediately after Christmas!

Vacation soon. Rest, relaxation, and possibly writing, possibly just wandering around in the winter snow.

End credits!

This Hymn 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!

Voluntary in D Minor

Everyone loves a waltz, no?

I like one. I like lots of them. By all sorts of composers, in all sorts of styles. So I wrote one for the organ, imitating the Viennese style by calling for the second beat to come in early.

I chose to put the rather simplistic pedal line in the left-hand staff as I find it much easier to read and play like this rather than having a third staff to monitor, even with the left hand leading the melody.

A PDF can be found here!

Voluntary in D Minor by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I'm now on GoFundMe! You can support my third book of short organ works from here.

Hymn-A-Week 27

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

This went places I didn't really expect it to. But I like it. Not sure if it's worth my liking it, but I do like it. So there.
Maybe useable for Once In Royal David's City, if you're looking for an unusual tune for it. There aren't a whole lot of texts with this rhythm, but it's the one that caught my attention for this week.

To find all the hymns I've written to date, there's a table of contents page here and a PDF link both there and here.

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Voluntary in F Major

A 79-note melody, consisting of a 12-note theme starting with the first note, then the first and second, then the first, second and third, and so on, until I managed to make it all the way through the tone row.

I was thinking about it. I initially said that I wrote it in two hours, but in fact I wrote it down in about two hours. I've been writing it all week in my long morning walks.

PDF here for the intrigued!

Voluntary in F Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I'm now on GoFundMe! You can support my third book of short organ works from here.

Hymn-A-Week #26

I have to get an earlier start on these, although rushing them can lead to some interesting results.

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Voluntary in A Minor

A little tarantella. An odd little tarantella, I think. But I like it, and I missed my Friday deadline, so here it is on Saturday!

So here's a PDF of the same for the interested.

Voluntary in A Minor by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Hymn-A-Week #25

Nothing much to say here! Just something I worked out in my brain standing out and waiting for the bus.

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Voluntary in C Major

Starting again from C Major, this second set of weekly pieces will be "Voluntaries," instead of "Preludes." Why? No reason not to. Plus it keeps me from running into some truly silly numbers. So I'm retiring "Prelude" - for now, anyway - and moving on to "Voluntary."

So after a week off - mainly centered around preparing videos from my composition recital of November 1st - I'm back with my first Voluntary:

This link is where you will find a PDF

Voluntary in C Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Hymn-A-Week #24

Took a week off to do composition recital stuff, including getting some videos uploaded of some of the preludes and various other pieces from Ego Trip 2015. I'm back!

Here's a little CM-with-repeated-last-line hymn; I was feeling a bit folksie.

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Prelude in B Minor

So this is it! The final of my first 24 preludes... nothing all that special, in and of itself. But it's the end of a cycle... and the start of a new one, next week!

Here's the PDF!

Prelude in B Minor by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Hymn-A-Week #23

Written a scant three days before Ego Trip 2015: my twenty-third hymn under this project.

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Prelude in B Major

A rousing fanfare, a day late because of work and such.

Okay, a couple hours late. But I still produced TWO preludes this week. One more to go and I'm done one complete key cycle!

PDF can be found here

Prelude in B Major by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Hymn-A-Week #22

Written up around various other work.

This Hymn by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Prelude in B-flat Minor

A slow number for those who like... this sort of thing, I suppose.

This is me catching up for a missed week so I can be done 24 Preludes by the time of my Ego Trip concert!

Here is where one would rightly expect a link to a PDF.

Prelude in B-flat Minor by Mike Cutler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.