Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me, save that thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.
Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word; I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord; thou and thou only, first in my heart, great God of heaven, my treasure thou art.
Great God of heaven, my victory won, may I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun! Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
Ancient Irish lyrics translated by Mary E. Byrne, 1905; versed by Elanor H. Hull. Traditional Irish melody, harmonized by Carlton R. Young, 1963.
I was saddened by the recent sudden, unexpected death of my near-lifelong friend, Paul Dozier. Several of his friends, who remained close to Paul during the last years, spoke at his Memorial Service. The hymn, “Be Thou My Vision” and its lyrics were featured during the service because of Paul’s reported fondness for the hymn. I have also loved this hymn for years and played it many times for congregational singing while serving as organist of various churches. Since Paul’s funeral, I have been working on this arrangement of the piece. Additionally, I recently was made aware of a very nice history of the piece with commentary on its authorship and underlying textual meaning. The article also publishes an additional verse of the hymn, that is not commonly known or sung.
My arrangement utilizes all three verses of the hymn as presented in an old United Methodist hymnal in my library. The hymn is marked to be sung unison, without vocal harmonization. Harmony during the verses remains faithful to the Carlton Young harmonization from the hymnal. However, I used chromatic harmonies during the intro and interludes between the second and third stanzas. Instrumentation includes recorder melody, a soprano saxophone playing an alternate version of the melody, an oboe playing a duet part (primarily with the recorder), two different string ensembles (one used for the intro and interludes and the other during verses), a dark brass-like synthesizer instrument playing lower-than-the-melody harmony parts and avoiding melody notes, and bass. I used music-paper, pencil and lots of eraser to compose several of the parts. This is contrasted to when I play a part I am concocting over and over before finally settling on what I am going to play, and then recording it without ever committing it to paper. More and more I am finding the tried and true pencil and paper method to be a reliable way of working.
All instruments and sounds except piano are made by my Yamaha Montage8 synthesizer. The piano sound is being made by my Kurzweil PC3K8 and is a piano program I used extensively years ago.
The video was created using ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the video that is synchronized to the music. I recorded the generated video using Syphon Recorder.
I then used the command ffmpeg to trim a little empty video from the beginning of the video, combine the video with the audio, and transcode the video to h264 and audio to aac. I then used Fotomagico to create titles, credits and the ending screen, and finally generate the video for this to be uploaded to YouTube. This workflow is still not automatic for me; but, it is getting easier.
I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of Be Thou My Vision.
For years, I planned to eventually record the trumpet-fanfare theme of the CBS Sunday Morning television series (“CBSSM,” hence) using synthesizer. I believed the fanfare was either a Vivaldi or Bach composition. When CBSSM aired their story about “Abblasen” on January 27, 2019, I learned that the piece was composed by the German trumpeter and composer, Elias Gottfried Reich (1667-1734). Reich was a contemporary of J.S. Bach and performed trumpet parts in Bach performances that are said to have been written specially for Reich by Bach.
Abblasen is known today because it is pictured in the oil portrait of Reich, painted by court-painter, Elias Gottlob Haussmann (1695–1774). Haussman also painted Bach and many other courtesans of the day. The musical notation for Abblasen has been transcribed from the included painting. As pictured, the fanfare is written in the key of C major. I originally performed Abblasen in the key of C. Because the prevalence of the D-trumpet during the Baroqué period, the piece is normally performed in D major. I performed it in C major and transposed it to D major using the magic of computers. The included notation is mine and was transcribed from an online source, needing notation for practice, and not currently having a working printer; so, I transcribed the notation by-hand. During practice, I developed keyboard fingering (included) that may seem odd to some players (and, even to me in an occasion or two, in retrospect).
Over the years, CBSSM featured three different trumpeter’s versions of the piece. The current CBSSM rendition was performed and recorded by Wynton Marsalis in 2004. Doc Severinsen performed the previous version. My arrangement of Abblasen features my Alesis Ion Synthesizer. In the first iteration of the theme, the 1st trumpet is accompanied by a lower harmony part and a 2nd trumpet playing down an octave from the 1st. In the second iteration of the theme, two additional accompanying parts are added to impart a defined harmony to the originally monophonic line.
Notation for “Abblasen” with SMOjr fingering.
The video uses a hodge-podge of audio and video technologies. I used ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the music-visualizer-video that is (approximately) synchronized to the audio. This project provides a way to utilize thousands of existing and author new “presets” for the Milkdrop visualizer that was a component of the Winamp media-player in the past. Milkdrop source code became open-source and the mProject project made this code available to other developers — including the developers who produced ProjectMilkSyphon. The .milk visualizer “preset” I used was one of the thousands that are publicly available. I selected the one that I used for this project by experimentation. I used Syphon Recorder to recorded the video from the visualization generated by ProjectMilkSyphon. Then, I used FotoMagico to generate the final video that I uploaded to YouTube with video titles, credits, and ending and to include the other visualizer video. Whew!
I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of Abblasen and the accompanying video.
When we needed to demonstrate new software features for our management or customers (i.e., mucky-mucks), we would stage dog-and-pony shows that were custom-made for the precisely-targeted edification of the particular recipient. Because of the highly-staged nature of our demonstrations, I often caught myself peevishly whistling a little of what I then thought was a familiar circus-tune called “Entrance of the Clowns.” Later research confirmed to me that the piece was often used in the circus to introduce incoming clowns and that the piece is the military march, Entrance of the Gladiators (henceforth, EOTG) by Julius Fučík. The piece was also published under the name, “Thunder and Blazes.”
Fučík was a citizen of what was then the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during the pre-World-War I timeframe. Fučík composed pieces in multiple styles and genres that included other marches, waltzes and polkas. During his 44-year lifespan he composed more than 400 pieces. “The Florentiner March” and “The Entrance Of The Gladiators” remain his two most-frequently-performed works.
I originally began this project in May, 2018. Over nearly a year I have been working on this. Too often I wandered away from the project and didn’t return for weeks and sometimes months. Like many other compositions that are now in the public domain because of their age, I was able to find the conductor’s score for EOTG on the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) site. I have found other scores on IMSLP that I used to produce previous projects (Satie Gymnopedies, Adagio for Strings, Pachelbel’s Canon, and Funeral March for a Marionette). The IMSLP score for EOTG is the original score for concert band, not orchestra. I also note that there is no cymbal part included with the other percussion parts.
My version of Entrance Of The Gladiators was recorded and edited one instrument part at a time, note by note — listening to the other parts I already recorded, while I record each new part. The Concert Band that I used is a computer virtual-instrument, Garritan Concert and Marching Band 2. This software allows construction of concert and marching bands of different sizes and numbers of performers.
For the animation to accompany EOTG, in true circus-animal fashion, I originally planned to film my cat, Buddy, jumping on command from cat-tree to cat-tree for treats to be provided by me. We were making great progress on Buddy’s ability and willingness to perform for me, usually on demand. Unfortunately, last year was a hard one for Buddy. Health problems, surgery and his advancing age left him with diminished strength and desire for treats and jumping, I was forced to abandon my idea for our lucrative future in the circus.
Needing to find a replacement video-topic to accompany EOTG, I focused (pun intended) on a group of photos I took earlier last year when I was regrettably forced to remove my massive magnolia tree, “Maggie.” The tree had grown so large that her roots had broken the concrete of my driveway in several places. It had become difficult for me to regularly trim Maggie’s limbs above the road to ensure safe passage by cars, trucks and other utility-vehicles including boats and planes. Mike Berryman and his crew from Berryman Tree Service are featured in the accompanying video as they, in one mesmerizing moment, remove Maggie, my Melbourne magnolia.
I hope that you enjoy this presentation.
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