Revenant Psalms, Vol. V is streaming (in full)

Here is the full YT playlist, but without 1000 subscribers, YT pays literally nothing. Please visit your favorite streaming service to download this and other records. Why stream when you can own it and access it anytime, ad free?

Meanwhile, here is the latest track with video and lyrics/paraphrase:

"Psalm 110 [Quaternary Resignation]."

Thanks for your support.

Psalm 7 [Shiggaion Chadash]

This psalm is designated a "Shiggaion" in its superscription, whatever that is. Strong's Concordance suggests it is "perhaps a wild passionate song with rapid changes of rhythm." Admittedly, this new setting—("Chadash" simply means "new")—has no dramatic rhythmic changes, but the intervals are a bit wild, and the sassy Dsus4/D trill (I'm talking chord shapes here, not actual notes) lends it a feel that seems worthy of the designation: shiggy. [But, please, let's not confuse it with the "shig" that is going on in west coast cities right now. Lord, have mercy.] 

Year D, by the way, recommends Psalm 7 for the Great Vigil of Holy Saturday and for 11th Ordinary.

Enter the Arbiter: Songs for Holy Week

 From the liner notes:

These songs for Holy Week are arranged roughly in terms of the sequence of days, from Palm Sunday to Easter sunrise, the exception being the instrumental prelude and postlude (Tracks 1 and 12), which I include as artifacts from their service as such in chapel worship ... While just two of these tracks (Tracks 3 and 11), are of my own musical composition (the latter piece opening with a brief quotation from the traditional tune “Eventide”), others include original modifications to old standards. On Track 5, the paraphrase of Psalm 61 (a “Year D” psalm overlooked by both the RCL and the daily lectionary) is mine, while the final musical phrase in the tune, ”The Bonnie Cuckoo,” replaces a more traditional repetition of the previous phrase; the final verse in the lyric of Track 2 is mine, inspired by my translation work on Johann Georg Hamann; the lyric for Track 10 is my attempt to fill a relative scarcity of hymn texts for Holy Saturday and “the harrowing of hell.”      

    Where the use of traditional material is concerned, I have attempted (in part as an example to worship students) to offer relatively fresh pairings of texts and tunes, as in the case of Rhosymedre, Noel Nouvelet, and Es Flog Ein Kleins Waldvögelein, but it is hoped that even the more familiar pairings will gain some new life by way of these guitar settings and (hopefully) fresh instrumentation. In each case I have relied on the guitar to provide most of the chords and have kept harmonies to a minimum, emphasizing melody lines throughout, both vocally and with other instruments, since the use of these tracks for online worship (the whole project being birthed while observing pandemic restrictions in late 2020 and early 2021) aims to encourage participants to sing. 

    I only hope this record will serve, however imperfectly, to remind the church and the world of all that we have to be grateful for in the ministry of the one Arbiter between God and humanity, the Judge who was willingly judged in our place, the Firstborn of a whole new creation, the last Adam who makes all things new and before whom all lying and accusing tongues should and shall cease. I also hope that somehow these songs in praise of Jesus, for all that he did during that Holy Week of the world’s redemption, may reach those who do not yet know him, that they may come to do so and “enter the Arbiter” by way of baptism — by dying and rising to new, eternal life in, with, and for him. — TMS

The Word in the Wind is streaming

The Word in the Wind [CD link] is now up and streaming. 

Here it is on Tidal

... on Spotify

... on YouTube Music

... on Apple Music

[Watch for other streamer links to be added.]

This CD, by the way, consisting mostly of material written in the late 1990s and recorded in 2001, was built loosely on Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany texts (one track per week, in sequence) from the Christian year. And here we are in Advent again. There is some good seasonal stuff here. 

Best worship songs: Strange Bedfellows, Grace Upon Grace, Living Bread, The Oxen. The latter is a fresh setting in DADGAD tuning of a poem by Thomas Hardy, a text once used by RVW in his wonderful Hodie: Fantasia on Christmas Carols. But don't expect that here! 

Best incidental/instrumental track: Christmas Joy. 

I would love to have the opportunity to remaster these tracks some day. So much of their tapestry amounts to first takes laid down as I was cutting my teeth on ProTools.

I may say more about each of these in separate posts, but for now, I hope you will check them out and find them worthy of a spot in your annual Christmas rotation. [The Amazon samples do not necessarily represent the best moments here, like the instrumental guitar breaks and the organ in Grace Upon Grace, but you can hear the tracks in their entirety on YT.] 

"Persevere" is streaming.

After having the discography residing strickly on CDs all this time, I am finally loading things onto streaming services. "Persevere" is the first one up. Here it is. Please spread the word and share widely.

"Sing to the Lord a new song"

Among the many challenges Year D presents, beyond the sermonic, is the fact that so many hymnals and songbooks overlook these texts as well. Search through the scripture index of your denomination's hymnal, and the odds are that, if the text is not in the lectionary, neither is it going to appear in your lectionary-based hymnal.

One of the wonderful things about the liturgical history of the church, however, is the fact that preachers who may not have had any particularly outstanding musical gifts, when they put their minds and pens to it, came up with some great hymns and spiritual songs, sometimes a tune, sometimes a lyric or psalm paraphrase, and in certain cases both.

Wouldn't it be cool if a gaggle of Christian songwriters, or a flock of shepherds, so to speak, applied themselves to the challenge of writing new hymns and songs based on Year D texts? Yeah, I think so, too. I say, go for it.