A few weeks ago, Jaimie and I were slated to sing and play piano respectively for our church music team. Our music director has been asking me for a while to consider writing new music for the sung parts of the liturgy. I had the time, and the inclination, so I sat down the first few days of January and worked out: a Sanctus intended to be sung especially during Epiphany.
We recorded one of our rehearsals that Sunday morning, and after a tiny bit of cleanup, I am sharing it with you! Here it is with Jaimie singing and me playing on a digital piano:1
If you like it, please use it! The music is freely available under a license which lets you do whatever you like with it (including remixing it, recording it, even selling it) as long as you let others do exactly the same with anything you do with it. This should make it easy for churches to use (no licensing deal required) and to share with others.
Here’s what I shared with our congregation about the piece:
As I was composing the new Sanctus for Epiphany, I was thinking about three things. The first two were the normal “tools” in a composer’s toolbox that one uses for setting a text like this well: making sure that any mentions of God are musically prominent, and making sure that texts like “Hosanna in the highest” don’t go “downward” tonally. The second was keeping the lines singable for a congregation. The final consideration was how to fit those things together with Epiphany! God has appeared! Epiphany reminds us — from Jesus’ circumcision, through the visit of the Magi, to his baptism, of how God appeared. In Jesus, God is truly with us, among us, was truly one of us — and this was not only for Jews, but for Gentiles like me. This is a cause for rejoicing: the holiness of God drawn near, for all of us. Soli deo gloria!
I have never written a piece like this before. It was a fun new challenge musically to write something with all my composition training in mind, but in a style and mode that suits our congregation. It has been a real joy to share with our church. Getting to stand with the congregation and sing it as someone else played it yesterday (the second Sunday in Epiphany) was really special. Hopefully I will be writing more music like this in the months and years ahead!
Notes
Once our piano is tuned, I hope to make a somewhat better recording than this, with none of the background chatter, a cleaner take of Jaimie’s voice, and the glorious sound of a real piano. ↩︎