I composed this Psalm Offering in 1986 as a Christmas/12th anniversary present for my beautiful bride, Ruthie. I remember composing it on the rickety old upright piano in the music room of St. Wenceslaus School at which I was teaching music at the time. It is a bit like Johann Sebastian Bach meets Aaron Copland. It is essentially a fugue with variations. It starts out just like a typical two part fugue one might find in Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” collection of preludes and fugues, but evolves into a Coplanesque “Appalachian Spring-like” variation on the subject of the fugue. Along the way, a secondary melody develops in the upper voices while the subject is augmented in the lower voices (amazing how much I still remember of Music Theory, Years 1 and 2). At the time, I was practicing some of the composing skills I learned in Music Theory, e.g. fugue, at the same time adapting and experimenting with them in the styles of modern 20th century composer, like Aaron Copland.
Related
Published by
Deacon Bob
I am a composer, performer, poet, educator, spiritual director, and permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. I just recently retired after 42 years of full-time ministry in the Catholic Church. I continue to serve in the Church part-time. I have been blessed to be united in marriage to my bride, Ruth, since 1974. I am father to four wonderful adult children, and grandfather to five equally wonderful grandchildren. In my lifetime, I have received a B.A. in Music (UST), M.A. in Pastoral Studies (St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, UST), Certified Spiritual Director. Ordained to the Permanent Diaconate for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, in 1991. Composer, musician, author, poet, educator. The Gospels drive my political choices, hence, leading me toward a more liberal, other-centered politics rather than conservative politics. The great commandment of Jesus to love one another as he has loved us, as well as the criteria he gives in Matthew 25 by which we are to be judged at the end of time directs my actions and thoughts.
View all posts by Deacon Bob
I composed this Psalm Offering in 1986 as a Christmas/12th anniversary present for my beautiful bride, Ruthie. I remember composing it on the rickety old upright piano in the music room of St. Wenceslaus School at which I was teaching music at the time. It is a bit like Johann Sebastian Bach meets Aaron Copland. It is essentially a fugue with variations. It starts out just like a typical two part fugue one might find in Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” collection of preludes and fugues, but evolves into a Coplanesque “Appalachian Spring-like” variation on the subject of the fugue. Along the way, a secondary melody develops in the upper voices while the subject is augmented in the lower voices (amazing how much I still remember of Music Theory, Years 1 and 2). At the time, I was practicing some of the composing skills I learned in Music Theory, e.g. fugue, at the same time adapting and experimenting with them in the styles of modern 20th century composer, like Aaron Copland.