Recorded live 2 April 2016 (iPhone)
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Psalm 103 with the response “The Lord is kind and merciful,” appears several times in the lectionary cycle. This was recorded at a wedding, so the small congregation is hard to hear. Only two verses are included in this video because the lack of memory on my iPhone prevented me from capturing the entire psalm setting.
The music for this piece is found in Audubon Park Psalter – Weddings and Funerals.
Recorded 24 April 2016 (iPhone) at the 11am Mass
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Baltimore MD
Psalm 145 – I Will Praise Your Name Forever
for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C
The music for this piece is found in Audubon Park Psalter – Year C.
As one of my primary interests is improvisation, I am always looking for ways to include improvisation in the liturgy. Here is a responsorial psalm built over a simple two-chord progression. The refrain melody is composed to fit over the chords, and while there are verses written out in the score, the cantor (as demonstrated here) is free to improvise the melody for each of the verses.
This video was recorded at the Easter Vigil which begins in darkness, so the lighting is very dim. Sadly, my iPhone ran out of memory, so I am only able to share the first verse here.
The music for this composition is included in the Feasts and Solemnities volume of the Audubon Park Psalter.
Recorded with my iPhone, this performance of Psalm 118 – This Is the Day – is from the 11am Mass at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. Brass quartet plays the choral parts on the refrain.
The music for this composition is included in the Feasts and Solemnities volume of the Audubon Park Psalter.
After several years of leading very eclectic music programs, I felt the need for a psalter that would raise the standard of music available and that could be adapted to many different settings. The Audubon Park Psalter is designed to be flexible instrumentally and vocally. The verses are written most often in a one pulse per measure chant style (like Gelineau) so that a consistent tempo may be kept between the refrain and the verses. Having chant style verses makes the singer’s task of learning multiple verses easier than a through-composed setting, but by keeping a pulse, it is possible to have much more interesting melodies than a common 3-5 note chant settings would offer.
Because the verses are most often written in traditional four-part harmony, a choir could sing the text or accompany the cantor by singing on a neutral syllable. A string quartet or woodwind ensemble could also read the vocal lines for additional accompaniment colors. Because of the consistent rhythm, a skilled ensemble of piano, guitar and drums, could take many of these settings into different jazz or contemporary styles. Written with a harmonic language that is interesting, yet accessible, these settings are designed to be singable, playable and achievable for most any parish music program. Check out the playlist of recordings from live performances of the psalter.
TIFF and JPG files of the refrains are available for download. You may search by occasion or first line:
Scores may be purchased as a set or individually: Year A, Year B, Year C, Solemnities and Feasts, Weddings and Funerals.
Today I received official approval from the Committee on Divine Worship of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to publish my settings of the Revised Grail Psalter with the ICEL refrains. The Audubon Park Psalter will consist of four volumes: one for each of the liturgical years (A, B, and C) and a fourth for Solemnities, Feasts and other holidays. Each volume will be 60-70 pages and contain over 50 psalm settings.
After several years of leading very eclectic music programs, I felt the need for a psalter that could be adapted to many different settings. The Audubon Park Psalter is designed to be useable in the traditional organ and cantor setting, but also by the contemporary ensemble with piano, guitars, and even drums. Any attempts to find repertoire common to both groups, would usually lead to complaints from one or the other, so when creating these new settings, I endeavored to use a harmonic language that will be interesting to the highly trained musicians and yet accessible to those with less formation.
The verses are written most often in a one pulse per measure chant style (like Gelineau) so that a drummer could play continuously through the psalm (instead of dropping out for non-metrical chanted verses). The verses are also written in traditional four-part harmony so that a choir could sing them (if desired). Having chant style verses makes the singer’s task of learning multiple verses easier than a through-composed setting, but by keeping a pulse, it is possible to have much more interesting melodies than a common 3-5 note chant settings would offer. These settings are designed to be singable, interesting and achievable for most any parish music program.
Look for more information to come as I finalize the drafts for publication.
10/22 – NOW AVAILABLE HERE
The competition at 99designs.com has concluded. After receiving numerous wonderful entries, I have chosen the logo below for Audubon Park Music. Look for a website redesign there soon incorporating the new logo.
Seeking Singing BirdsAs you may remember, I registered with ASCAP just a few months ago. In order to do so, I needed to choose a name for my publishing company. After exploring a few possibilities (some of which had already been taken), I settled upon Audubon Park Music. The neighborhood where I live in Orlando is called Audubon Park and the working title for my psalter has been the Audubon Park Psalter, so it made sense to me to go ahead and make something like that the name of my publishing company as well.
What’s one of the first things you need when starting up a business? Nowadays, that would be a website and business cards, of course! The website – audubonparkmusic.com – I set up the day I chose the name using a simple WordPress template, but I didn’t want to print simple plain business cards. Every good business has some sort of identifiable mark or logo that is instantly recognizable. Take McDonalds, Nike, or AT&T for example. I wanted a nice clean logo for my company, so I turned to 99designs.com.
At 99designs, there are over 200,000 designers competing on various projects. I presented a design brief outlining what sort of logo I would be looking for and some of my thoughts about what the logo could or should look like. One week later, I have had 32 people submit 152 designs for my consideration. I have been very impressed by the creativity of several of the designers, and now it is time for me to make my final choice. Because I have always had a difficult time making choices, I would love to invite you to participate in a poll and rate the designs that I have selected as finalists. You may see the choices and provide your feedback here:
http://99designs.com/logo-design/vote-nxe1j0. I expect to wrap this up quickly, so please vote in the next 24 hours to have your opinion count.
While evaluating birds, I also received a request for an arrangement of HOLY ANTHEM for organ and brass quartet. I hope to have the Finale performance file of it uploaded today here if you’d like to give it a listen. My next composition task is to set a poem by Emily Dickinson for Gateway High School. The premier is scheduled for just about a month from now, so if the girls are going to have time to learn it, I need to get them a score soon!
In addition to looking for singing birds, I’m also looking for singing people. This summer (preferable sooner rather than later), I’d like to make a recording of some of my compositions to be released as an album. If you are in the Orlando area and would be interested in being part of this recording group, please let me know so that I can begin to figure out rehearsal dates and locations.
Hoping the birds are singing for you!
Glenn
Newsletter Issue 19 – 2014 04 10
See the complete list of newsletter issues here.
As I move forward towards establishing Audubon Park Music as the publisher of my compositions, today I launched a logo competition at 99designs.com. Karen had suggested that I get a professionally designed logo after a Full Sail student developed a delightful logo for her Studio Osborne business. As I don’t know any current Full Sail students, I opted to use the service 99designs.com which I learned about from listening to the Entrepreneur On Fire podcast.
99designs brings together thousands of graphic designers and offers them the opportunity to submit ideas for design competitions like the one I just launched for a logo for Audubon Park Music. At just under two hours old, I am already delighted by several of the designs that have been submitted. You can check out the submissions for yourself until Sunday evening (4/6/2014) by clicking here.
Launch preparationOne of the advantages of moving to Central Florida almost seven years ago is the proximity of the Kennedy Space Center. While I may not be as big of a fan of the space program as my wife Karen, it was still neat to know that people and satellites left for the far reaches of space just a few miles down the road. We could even see the launch trails from home when there were not too many clouds. Sadly, this week will be the last week to visit the Vehicle Assembly Building before they begin its transformation for the new launch systems.
Seeing a line of smoke in the sky from 50+ miles away, even if impressive, is no where near the thrill and excitement of actually going out to Titusville to see a launch. Attending a launch meant leaving several hours in advance with lots of waiting in a crowded park. Eventually, there would be a few minutes of excitement when you could not just see the shuttle launch, but eventually hear and feel it too! Then it was back to being patient again as we took one of the two options for returning to Orlando from the coast – the local road or the highway – neither one of which moved much more than at a snail’s pace because of the high volume of cars.
Night LaunchOnce when we participated in my cousin’s Flat Stanley project, we went out for a night time launch. As you can see in the picture (iPhone pre-flash photo), it became as bright as day when the shuttle took off. Even if the traffic was particularly bad that evening, it was worth the effort. The marvels of science, the creativity and inventiveness of humankind using the resources of the world around us and less computing power than I had in my iPhone sent people off the earth (to the moon!) and brightened the night time sky. While I can’t currently afford to book my flight to space on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, I do hope that I live to see the day when space travel becomes a regular occurrence.
While I don’t expect to be traveling into space any time soon, I do have a couple of websites rolling out on the launch platform that you can begin to explore. First up is organimprovisation.com. Here is information on improvising at the organ. While I intend to offer some instructional support for those who would like to master the skill, right now the website mostly contains information about other well-known improvisers with links to their performances on YouTube or resources that they have available.
The second site I just began to set up yesterday. Consider it still in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Audubon Park Music is the name I registered as publisher of my music when I joined ASCAP this week. My plan is eventually to move all the sales of my compositions over to audubonparkmusic.com so that wmglennosborne.com can focus more on upcoming performances. Have a look at both of the websites and let me know what I could add that would be of value to you. While they may not be ready for take off, this is your chance for a pre-launch tour.
Wishing you all the best,
Glenn
Newsletter Issue 15 – 2014 02 18
See the complete list of newsletter issues here.