VocalEssence Chorus & Ensemble Singers

World Premiere; An Essentially Choral World Premiere, commissioned by VocalEssence and American Composers Forum with support from the Jerome Foundation

Philip Brunelle and Garrison Keillor asked for a simple, doxology-like melody for the setting of “Table Grace,” with the desire that it could be easily learned by a congregation or audience. As most composers realize, to write a melody that is at once simple, memorable, tuneful, and yet remains true to one’s own compositional style is no easy matter. Another structural challenge was presented by the poem itself, which is a sonnet, and which at fourteen lines contains “stanzas” of unequal lengths. Since my challenge was to write an easily-learnable melody, I needed to have it repeat in some way and yet not become truncated at the beginning or end.

My solution was to base the melody on one of the pentatonic modes (which are frequently used in much of the world’s folk music) in the hopes of retaining the elegant simplicity and directness of the poem. To compensate for the stanzas of unequal lengths, I constructed the melody in small “cells”; each subsequent section of the poem starts on the second melodic cell of the last section’s melody, and adds one or more cells to the end. Thus the melody develops a forward progression and continues to rise throughout the piece, as if the prayer is gaining in intensity or wafting skyward.

The choir (and/or congregation) sings this melody through once in unison. Upon the repetition, an eight-part choir surrounds the melody with a halo of harmony, humming and singing on various vowels. This harmony provides reinforcement to the words of the poem and dispels

any stasis arising from the repetition of melodic figures. The piece is practical for church use in that it may also be performed as unison choir/congregation plus organ (providing the harmony) or as unison/choir/organ.

- Matthew Brown