Ta. 1--Praise to the Lord

First, a reminder that in this collection, a "T" number specifies an original work. A "Ta" number specifies an arrangement of an existing melody or song. 

My family is fairly musical. Both of my parents grew up playing musical instruments, though they don’t play them very often anymore. As a family, we played musical numbers in church a few times together. My dad played piano, my mom played flute, my sister played viola, my brother played string bass, and I played cello. Together we formed a perfectly well-rounded ensemble. I wanted to provide arrangements for us, to practice and experiment my composition skills a little more. 

Here is my very first arrangement: “Praise to the Lord,” hymn #72 in the LDS hymnbook. I used the hymnbook directly for some of this arrangement, but otherwise I tried to write different parts that were easy to play and that sounded right with every other part. I didn’t have knowledge of voice-leading principles back then, but it all turned out pretty well. I also tried to make the music reflect the words of the hymn (especially with the idea of “shout[ing] all our praises again,” repeating a phrase in measures 22–23), as well as giving the melody to several different instruments throughout the piece. I didn’t write a piano part, figuring that my dad could play all of it with us on the piano.As far as I could tell, he was able to.