Hymn Preludes for Organ

This is an organ fantasia on the old American song of the same title. This was performed by Claudia Dumschat on October 14 2021 at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, of pieces by members of New York Composers Circle. The score is available on the composers' J.W. Pepper catalog.

The Little Brown Church (In the Vale), for organ

An organ prelude on the well known gospel hymn.

Shall We Gather at the River, for organ

A chorale prelude in blues style of the hymn "Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart", for pipe organ.

Chorale Prelude on "Morecambe" for organ

A Flor Peeters-like "partita" for pipe organ on the Lutheran nativity hymn "O Jesulein Süss", which is in the Episcopal Hymnal with the name "O Spirit of Life, O Spirit of God." Digital output using OrganTeq software.

The Bach harmonization of the theme opens the piece, and five variations follow.
Var. 1 Two-voice invention (first of two)
Var. 2 Reharmonization (soft, chromatic, spooky)
Var. 3 Trio sonata (theme on pedals 4' reed)
Var. 4 Chorale prelude (in A minor, theme shoehorned into 4/4 time)
Var. 5 (new addition) Another two-voice invention
Var. 5 Valedictory reharmonization (loud, but ending softly like the beginning)

Variations on O Jesulein Süss

This is an arrangement of my Suite for Saxophone Quartet, with basically no changes other than being transposed up a third, and parts redistributed with fifth parts filled in in places.

Suite for Clarinet Quintet

Namaste Clarinet Quintet at Morlacchi Conservatory, Perugia, Italy, March 25 2025.


The Suite comes out of a long-standing enjoyment of traditional counterpoint, of jazz and other popular music styles. As you might guess, it ended up being a rather madly eclectic extended work, nominally based on the Baroque suite.

Allemande Rag packs syncopated ragtime melody and rhythm, with touches of blues harmony, into the traditional Baroque dance form.

The Waltz (1:30), quite in contrast to the Allemande, answers to Impressionist models, spinning melodies, shattering them, and weaving what counterpoint can be found in the fragments.

The March (6:05) veers all the way into atonality, but bringing back ragtime rhythms. Its three sections are, first, the march proper; then a very slow, extended wail in the slowest possible swing; and lastly a driving jazz fughetta in the fastest possible swing, and that works its way back to the opening idea.

The mournful Tango (9:20) is arranged, with very little modification, from a short song ("Shadows") in an unproduced musical I wrote in my 20s. It is in a straightforward tango style with the familiar “marcato” bass rhythm.

Fantasia (12:00), the longest of the movements, is a wild, eclectic parody on Bach's famous Toccata from the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Baroque counterpoint, jazz and 20th-century neo-classicism are all combined and juxtaposed helter-skelter, with twelve-bar blues thrown in for good measure. The Fantasia goes directly into the final Fugue movement (16:05), which lands back into something like the world of the Allemande Rag: jazz syncopation and harmony within classical counterpoint and form.

The writing of the Suite has a forty-year timeline. The song that the Tango is arranged from was written in 1982 in NYC. The Fugue finale was first an abstract composition on my new Ensoniq VFX-SD synthesizer in 1991, in Johnson City, TN. Several years later, when the clarinet professor at ETSU, the late Tom Crawford, invited me to write for the Watauga Sax Quartet, which he coached and managed, I arranged and expanded the Fugue for that ensemble. The Tango and Allemande Rag were quickly added for the same group, and they performed those three movements several times, including on local public radio. The Waltz, March and Fantasia took a couple more years, until 2000, to finish, and in the meantime, the sax quartet had unfortunately broken up. Also in the meantime I was getting a handle on a more modernist style and on longer forms, which shows in that later writing. Several times I was flirting to some degree with chaos-within-boundaries, seeing how far out it could get while maintaining the integrity of form and style.

That is where the story stood until this year, when the prospect of re-arranging the entire piece for the Namaste Clarinet Quintet brought the Suite back out of the “Shadows" for the New York Premiere of the whole piece. This recording is of a repeat performance at the Perugia Conservatory!

Additional flute (or violin) and cello parts for 14 piano pieces. In approximate order of difficulty: 1 Khatchaturian "Ivan Sings", 2 Tchaikovsky "Sweet Dream" (1:30), 3 Prokofiev "Evening" (3:43), 4 Ellmenreich "Spinning Song" (5:54), 5 Bach Prelude in C (7:37), 6 Chopin Waltz in Am (9:37), 7 Prokofiev March (11:51), 8 Beethoven Minuet in G (12:57), 9 CPE Bach "Solfeggietto" (15:17), 10 Heller "L'Avalanche" (16:33), 11 Chopin Mazurka in F (17:51), 12 Chopin Polonaise in Gm (19:40), 13 Nazareth "Remando" [not yet included in this file], 14 Bach Invention #1 (22:24)

Trios - Trio Accompaniments to Elementary Level Piano Literature

MIDI rendition of a hymn prelude based on the tune "ABERSTWYTH", normally set to either the text "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" or "Watchman, Tell Us of the Night." I had in mind the latter, Advent-oriented text in mind while writing this. As listeners, we may well query the watchman, "Will we arrive at the end of this piece on the final phrase of the melody, in the right key, and on the proper degree of the scale?" And his cryptic answer is "I'll give you one out of three on that!"

Prelude on ABERSTWYTH

This is a "peasant stomp" version of the well-known early American hymn tune "Holy Manna."  The lyrics most often set are "Brethren We Have Met to Worship", although there are many others.

Prelude on "Holy Manna"

A fourteen-minute romp through favorite moments in Rossini's comic opera La Cenerentola, including "Come un'ape", "Una volta c'era un re" and "Non più mesta." The performance is by the arranger on secondo, Lynn Rice-See on primo, premiered November 6, 2023 in Bologna, Italy.

Four-hand piano sheet music is available for sale here:
https://www.jwpepper.com/11548851.item

Fantasia on Themes from Gioachino Rossini's "La Cenerentola" for piano four-hands

An original short composition for solo piano, Caffeine Rag, in the process of following the Joplin-like ragtime template, becomes progressively more awash in fast and jittery syncopations due to drinking too much coffee.

This was recorded in the late 20-teens. A later video recording was made by New York Composers Circle, https://youtu.be/TctWX9FHvKA.

Caffeine Rag

An organ prelude on the Methodist hymn "And Can It Be/Amazing Love."

And Can It Be (MIDI version)

Prelude in D minor for piano

I Have the Joy (MIDI)

ComeThouFount.vnorg

An arrangement for organ of the Epiphany (post-Christmas) hymn "There's A Song in the Air" by Josiah Holland. The performance is by Claudia Dumschat at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in New York City, October 14, 2021. The score is available at the composer's J.W. Pepper site.

There's a Song in the Air

What Child Is This (MIDI)

This composition (revised Oct. 2019) is a burlesque adaptation of the 1877 popular song "In the Gloaming" with music by Annie Fortescue Harrison & lyrics by Meta Orred. Recording is of a live performance by soprano Christina Kay and pianist Geoffrey Burleson, at a concert of New York Composers Circle, January 22, 2020. Recording engineer was Jeremy Tressler.

    From the program notes: "My version of this that you’ll hear tonight was commissioned some 20 years ago by the soprano and Oberlin classmate Susan Cannedy who was teaching at Radford University at the time. Before then I had written an organ fantasia on another sentimental old song known as 'The Little Brown Church in the Vale.' That piece was was performed in Tennessee where we were living, and it was more or less modeled on William Bolcom’s Gospel Preludes. Susan heard the piece and suggested to me, hey, why don’t you do something like that for *my* favorite old song, and I’ll perform it at Radford for a recital and masterclass. So, a couple of years later, that happened, and tonight is the NY premiere.
    "The lyrics of this song are a break-up letter in verse from one lover to another. It is widely assumed that outside forces, such as a difference in social class between the lovers, is what tore them apart. I doubt that anybody now knows the real story behind the lyrics, but in my more twisted rendering of the song, increasingly twisted as it proceeds, I’m imagining a lot more *inner* turmoil than the lyrics let on about, and that if the poet Meta Orred were on Facebook today, her relationship status would be 'It’s complicated.'"

In The Gloaming

1. Be Thou My Vision
2. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
3. Christ the Lord is Risen Today, a chorale prelude

David See 2

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks