From Psalm 30: “Weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes with the morning.”

These Sunday morning emails are intended to be a source of joy.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that, though I could not have foreseen it, the sharing of these emails, each with a link to an mp3 and a score, was the goal of my career all along.

For fifty years I wrote music, always with a vague notion that sooner or later, somewhere or other, it would be performed, would be heard, would mean something to someone. I anticipated that my music would be heard in recitals, concerts, worship services and broadcasts … and it was.

In October 2013, only because I thought it would be fun, I began sending a Sunday morning email to friends and fans. From the start, I included a vignette, a ‘back story’ or a mini-essay, sometimes humorous, sometimes thoughtful.

Then and now, I enjoyed doing the writing and enjoyed when friends responded. Fun, indeed. No big deal.

Then, 14 months ago, came the pandemic. Overnight, the purpose, meaning and impact of these emails deepened. Deprived of concerts, recitals, worship services and each others’ company, our email inboxes assumed a new importance.

The practice of writing and sharing these emails has reshaped my notion of what I was doing when I was composing all that music and trying to get it “out there.”

Without knowing it, I was preparing to be in a position to send out these ‘e-pistles’ as gestures of friendship during the worst year in living memory.

Getting to the point that I could do such a thing was a lengthy, expensive and complicated process. Until 1995, all of my scores were hand-written. I had to master a computer music notation program so that I could share professional-looking scores in PDF form; I hired a graduate student to tutor me. I had to recruit musicians -- some played for fun, some for money. I had to engage and pay engineers to record my music in rented studio space.

A good friend set up a domain for me, a website to serve as a platform (if that’s the word). I had to build and maintain a data base of addresses of friends and fans who have said that they WANT to receive these emails. I had to write the verbiage, i.e, a weekly ‘column’ to elucidate the music, an on-going task at which I joyfully tinker almost every day. I conceive these emails about five or six weeks in advance and each one is revised at least thirty times before I send it out. I’m not complaining! Believe it or not, revising is engrossing and always feels FUN to me.

I now see that the sending of these weekly emails in this time of crisis is largely WHY I was composing for all those years. The goal was to offer a little “joy in the morning.”

Which brings me back to Psalm 30: “Weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes with the morning.”

I set these words to music long ago, in 1975, as a deliberate gesture of reaction and rebellion against the avant garde style of writing that had been pressed upon me during my “School of Music” years. It is very traditional, very conservative, with a straightfoward melody and a familiar chord progression. I was affirming my intention that my music would NOT be written in a bizarrely new, unique style never heard before, but rather as one small extension of an existing tradition.

To hear Heidi Miller and Chris Miller (no relation) singing, with an accompaniment performed by Beth Troendly, my setting of that verse, click on the link above (be patient, please; the music begins at :09).

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.