Psalm Offering 5’s origin is found as a musical setting of the Lord’s Prayer for a Mass setting I had wrote intending it to
be a Graduate School Project back in 1985. I had dedicated the setting of the Lord’s Prayer to Fr. Denny Dempsey who was the associate pastor of St. Wenceslaus. Denny is a very good friend of our family. When he was the associate pastor of St. Wenceslaus, Denny spent a lot of time over at our home in his free time, watching movies and eating with our family. Denny and Ruth were very close, Ruth often acting as his confidant. Denny would later become pastor of St. Michael in St. Michael, Minnesota, then pastor of Jesu Cristo Resucitado in Venezuela, and is presently the pastor of St. Dominic in Northfield, Mn. Denny is a very athletic, active person. I remember him telling Ruthie and I that inspired upon seeing the movie “Breaking Away” (1979), he decided to take a year and bike all over the United States. He had hope to find the same inspiration in the movie “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure: A Story About A Boy and His Bike,” however, he never quite made it to the point in the movie when “large Marge” gave Pee Wee a ride in her semi-truck. Denny later became my graduate school project mentor when it became apparent that the Graduate School Project committee was not going to accept the musical setting of the Mass. A good friend, a good mentor, and a wonderful priest, Denny will always have a special place in the hearts of Ruthie, my kids, and I.
Never wanting a good melody to just lay around and not be played, I decided to resurrect that old setting of the Lord’s Prayer and completely redo it as solo piano music. The music is constructed in Rondo form, namely: melody A, melody B, melody A, melody C, melody A, melody D, melody A, Coda. Melody A varies in accompaniment and style every time it repeats to provide interest. Sometimes the melody in A is voiced in the middle of the piano, the upper register, and the lower register of the piano. The music starts pianissimo (very soft) and gradually increases in volume to fortissimo (very loud) in the Coda, only to diminish once more to pianissimo at the very end.
I would like to end this with two Fr. Denny stories. Denny wanted to know if Andy could throw a stone from our yard and hit an old vacant house that was kiddie corner from our yard. So picking up some stones, the two start throwing stones at the house. After several attempts, Andy showed Denny that he could hit the house with a stone. Then Denny threw the next stone which instead of bouncing off the old siding ended up breaking a window, at which Denny suggested that it might be prudent for Andy and him to beat a hasty retreat by using the word, “Run!!!”
The second story concerned one of the many visits Denny would make to my home while he was the associate pastor at St. Wenceslaus. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Denny needing to to get out of the rectory came over for a visit. Ruthie was away from home, so it was just Denny and I sitting around chewing the fat. The kids were quite ornery that day fighting and bickering at one another. After a half hour of the kids fighting with one another, Denny quietly got up and walked to the door. He paused, turned and said, “There are times like these when celibacy is not a burden. I get to leave and you have to stay here and deal with all this (fighting kids).” I replied, “Chicken!”, at which point, Denny waved and walked out the door.
