by Kile Smith | Jun 14, 2018 | Anthem, Choral music, church music
Behold the Best, the Greatest Gift (Anon.) SATB, org. (2010) $2.10 First page. Commissioned for the installation of the Kegg pipe organ at Phoenixville Presbyterian Church, Pennsylvania. Original tune, text from Scottish Hymnal, early American refrain text. Excellent...
by Kile Smith | Feb 24, 2018 | Choral music, church music, liturgical music
For unison congregation, organ, and optional cantor and optional descant. The Association of Anglican Musicians commissioned me to write music for the Closing Eucharist of their National Conference in Philadelphia, June 17–22, 2012. The Mass for Philadelphia was first...
by Kile Smith | Feb 2, 2018 | Anthem, Choral music, church music
SATB, organ. Moderately easy. Original tune with spare harmonies; an early American sound that recalls shape-note singing. Composed 1982, revised 2003. See and hear the entire work here. Come to Calvary’s holy mountain, Sinners, ruined by the fall; Here a pure and...
by Kile Smith | Jan 19, 2018 | church music
I’m now a contributor to the Augsburg Fortress Prelude Music Planner blog; my first effort is up now, about the writing of my (now 10-yr-old!) Vespers, how Epiphany and Lutheran chorales are behind it all, and how Bach eventually taught me a thing or two in...
by Kile Smith | Dec 20, 2017 | Choral music, church music, liturgical music, new music
With an Alleluia and an Agnus Dei written in the last two weeks, I’ve now completed a chant-based Mass for our Christmas Eve service. It began in 2001 with the Sanctus; we added the Gloria in 2006. I re-used the Sanctus for Easter 2005: It is an interpolation between...
by Kile Smith | Oct 28, 2017 | church music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, Lutheran, WRTI
Anniversaries bump into each other on this Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, Saturday at 5 pm on WRTI. It’s year 500 since the beginning of the Reformation, almost to the day, when Martin Luther posted 95 theological and ecclesiastical points he wished to...
