New Original Composition Composed for Church Last Week - "With God All Things are Possible" - Based on Matthew 19:26

Pixabay.com: Licensed in the Public Domain

Hello everyone! Today, I have a new composition for you which I composed last week for the offertory at Sunday's church service. I intended to post this piece much sooner in the week, which goes to show how busy I have been (it was a stressful week).

The reason why I composed this piece is that I am now beginning a job as the intern music director at Bethlehem United Methodist Church. I intend to compose as much as I can for the job, and hope to hit one piece for each week's service. I am not going to be doing the music for this week's service, so no piece this week :(

This piece is based on one of the week's scriptures - Matthew 19:26 - which states:

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

The piece has a beginning introduction based on the portion of the scripture about men. The next section is about the portion of the scripture about all things being possible with God. I will go into more compositional details in a minute. First, let's see the piece:

Composition

So, the week that I composed this was quite stressful. I found myself responsible for the upcoming service (which I was determined to compose a piece for). At the same time, I also had a calculus midterm on Friday to study for and an audition on Saturday to prepare for. I found my sanity slowly decreasing as the week went on. However, I was determined to write this piece. And I did. Here's a copy of what I posted about it on Facebook:

You may wonder why I tried to force myself to write so quickly. The reason is that necessity is the mother of invention, and discipline is the father of invention. For the past few months, I have slacked as a composer. I have let a busy life impact my writing. This week (and in the coming future), I tried to get into the discipline of making decisions quickly in order to write as quickly as possible. This piece is the result. It may not be my greatest work, but a composer needs to compose.

Over the week, I woke up at 4am several days to study for calc, and to compose/practice for the service and audition. In the end, I don't think the midterm went to well, and I definitely think the audition could have gone better. But, I finished the piece. I decided not to do the music for this week just to kind of come down from the stress level that last week caused (a lot happened). I am now refreshed and ready for the coming weeks/months. Let's get into what is going on.

Analysis

This piece consists of an introduction which introduces the material which the rest of the piece will be based off of. Almost everything within the piece stems from the introduction's material. If you are interested enough, you can figure out where the connections are. This introduction is meant to depict impossibility, and the limitations of mankind. I tried to have large dynamic contrast, and you will notice that it is rather sporadic in terms of dynamics as well as harmony.

The introduction is followed by the main section of the piece, themed on the limitless possibilities that come with God. Again, almost all of the material in this section stems from something in the introduction. I did this to highlight a connection between God and man. This section can be analyzed as having several distinct ideas. First, the main idea which consists of two parts:

The first part lands on IV

The second lands on V (creating a Half Cadence)

This section is repeated an octave higher.

After the half cadence, a "new" transitional theme (really stemming from the introduction occurs).

This theme leads us to A Major for a development of the material from the beginning statement. Now this statement is no longer a single note, but rather a note with harmonic definitions under it.

We then get a transition back to D Major because the piece needs to end (I am getting close to three minutes. I really could have done a better job on this transition. I think it is quite obvious that I wrote it in about 15 minutes on Friday night because I was freaking out about having to finish the piece.

The main theme is repeated one last time, and a coda helps confirm a cadence in D Major.

My Goals

In all, I did not mean for this piece to be something incredibly innovative in terms of composition. Instead I aimed to depict what the passage means through music (and create something enjoyable and inspiring to the congregation). I could definitely make revisions to this piece, but I don't intend to perform it again any time soon, and I think I reached my goals.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading/listening to this! I wanted to get this up on Sunday, but I just didn't have time. The rest of the week proved to be just as busy. I did not get home until 8 or 9 each night! I now have time to finish this article, so I am finishing it. I hope you found the piece enjoyable, and I would appreciate any feedback which you might have! As I said, this piece is not meant to be compositional gold, but I definitely would appreciate your input so that I may better myself for the next compositions. Have a nice weekend!

(Note) In order to encourage meaningful feedback on the platform, I will check comment trails of users who leave superficial comments (ie "Awesome post," or "Upvoted.") and will mute any users who exhibit a pattern of leaving "spammy" comments.