The season of Lent and our recent history as a nation call us to repentance. Hopefully, this leads us individually to take responsibilities for our own sins and confess them to the Lord, Who alone can make atonement for them. This year is the 25th anniversary of one of my wife’s and my favorite choruses, a setting of King David’s heartfelt words of repentance in Psalm 51:10-11, “Create in me a Clean Heart.” Of course, these words have been set many other times, and several of those settings remain in use currently. But my 1996 setting offers an alternative, in fact, two alternatives.
In August of that year I heard the music in my head one morning and simply jotted down what I heard. The tune ended up being quite singable and easily taught, because it moves mostly up and down the scale by steps and generally stays on the beat, so it resembles a hymn tune – until the unsettling syncopations of the bridge “Cast me not away from thy presence.” The first part returns as a variation, with the melody now generally a third higher and more intense in its pleading for forgiveness and renewal. I have always relished the drag triplets on “renew a right spirit.” The melody’s total range is from middle C to D an octave and a step higher, so all can sing it. The octave leap on “O God” focuses us on the Lord’s majesty and holiness, and the descending scale paints an image of His gracious descent into our world as Emmanuel.
In the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s, songwriters such as Bill and Gloria Gaither relished extended chords and accidentals, particularly from secondary dominants that tonicized other keys, that is, made scale tones other than the keynote sound like the keynote, or tonic. I am a child of such rich harmony, as evidenced by the A11(b9) chord in just the second measure that moves us from the key of F major briefly to D minor. The B diminished 7th chord in measure 4 pushes us toward the C major of measure 6. The harmony calms down for a bit and stays in F major, but favoring chords on the second (Gm) and third (Am) steps of the scale through the bridge. All the other accidentals are formed as before by secondary dominants of C (the dominant) and D minor (the relative minor). The tune ends with a familiar Contemporary Christian Music cadence, going from the dominant (V) to the subdominant (IV), but then I chicken out and take it to the tonic. Oh, well.
You can download a free copy of the melody here. There is a stunning video created by my wife, Daphne Saul, right on this page or the home page of Walter Saul, Composer. Enjoy and be encouraged!
When Cliff Fairley, our choirmaster at Sunnyside United Methodist Church in Portland, Oregon, heard this chorus, he challenged me to make an arrangement for the choir (how I love open-minded and encouraging music directors!). It seems my inner jazz came to the fore. The anthem opens with an a cappella, tightly-voiced version of the tune inspired by George Shearing. As you can see from the opening page, there are frequent unisons where all four voices are literally on the same tone. There are also plenty of extended chords and added-tone chords as well as some sonorities that are downright dissonant and hard to explain. And I even manage to sneak in some imitative counterpoint! The second strain is the same as the chorus itself. The bridge then repeats and adds on a modulation up a step to G major. There is quite the dramatic shout chorus with some chords borrowed from G minor to end the anthem quietly and reverently. To hear this version, click here.