“Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne” is a beautiful hymn to use at Christmas time.  This particular hymn contains a lot of accidentals…creating awkward moves for the church pianist.  I will attempt to create smoother harmonic changes making it more user-friendly for the average church pianist.

Editor notes for Part One of “Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne”

Download the free pdf  example here to view as you read the information below.

1. I like to use a ‘G’ natural in place of the ‘G’ sharp on the last word of line one. I just think it sounds better.

2. Notice the chord number labels in line two. Whenever a I chord is lasting more than one beat and moving to a V chord…you can substitute a vi chord in place of the I chord before moving into the V chord.   The vi chord creates a warmer tone.

In plain English…a I chord in the key of D = DF#A and the V chord in the key of D = AC#E

I look forward to sharing more improvising ideas with the rest of “Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne” in part two.

*Keep in mind…the chords in the piano score will not match the four parts from the hymnal version.

Tags: church pianist, improvising ideas, thou didst leave thy throne

This entry was posted on Friday, November 12th, 2010 at 12:50 am and is filed under Accompaniment tips, christmas, Improvising hymns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.