“The Haven of Rest” is one of my favorite hymns. I usually hear this hymn performed as a vocal solo.
As a pianist, we must learn to make the text come to life by animated accompaniment…making the message even more real and meaningful.
The first verse begins with a troubled scene of a lost soul but ends with the rescue by the Saviour!
So…we begin with a mood of turmoil. I use an up and down pattern in the right hand to depict the boistrous waves of the sea.
Then…the waves suddenly grow calm…when I hear the sweet voice of my Saviour. ( Notice the movement lessens in the accompaniment.)
I just want to keep going and explain the next part of the accompaniment because the mood of happiness increases… creating a cascading wave of crescendo as Jesus floods the ‘saved’ soul with unexplainable peace!
You’ll have to wait…part two will reveal this joyous picture of salvation.
(View of run from the video of “Father’s World” excerpt)
It’s so easy to rush through a busy fill-in passage during a hymn arrangement.
If you’re like me, you think…”That’s alot of notes! I’d better play fast to make them fit in!” So….you rip through the pretty stuff as though it were thrown in all of a sudden and listeners think…”Woah! What was that?”
Fill-ins and runs either enhance the melody (hopefully)…or are used to add movement during a held word.
Runs that intertwine with the melody are meant to move along at a fair pace so as not to break the flow of thought.
Slowing down for a run during a held word is appropriate. Such is the case in today’s excerpt from my arrangement entitled: “This is My Father’s World” published by Soundforth Publications (now under Lorenz Publishing)
I wanted to share this free piano arrangement of The First Noel.
Natalie Wickham of Music Matters Blog arranged this easy piano duet of The First Noel. Natalie gave me permission to post an audio of her arrangement but I will share the link to her blog for this nice piano duet.
This free arrangement would be nice for a beginning piano student to play with a teacher or more advanced piano student.
The arrangement is short but would work well in the smaller church. You could always play it two times for a longer offertory.
As promised in part one of this lesson…I’m sharing a video demonstration of my very first hymn improvising piano lesson.
The only change…I used the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” instead of “Like a River Glorious”. Either hymn is fine but I decided on the second one for the video.
