Description

2017 Sheet Music Contest 2nd Place Winner

For our fall 2016 stake conference, the request was made to have a primary children’s choir. Being a professed “organ snob” and knowing there are not many arrangements for children’s choir with an organ accompaniment, I requested the honor of composing the arrangements we would use for the stake conference.

After learning the theme of the meetings would be temple work, an obvious choice was Janice Kapp Perry’s I Love to See the Temple. I had to work very quickly because there was not much time to get the arrangements done before it was time to begin working with the primaries from the various wards. I made series of recordings in case the primary chorister in a given ward wished to do some rehearsal during primary. These recordings ranged from “obvious melody” to “no melody” (accompaniment only). I have included the “obvious melody” recording here.

Tabernacle Organist emeritus John Longhurst assisted with the editing. When it was complete, I sent it to Sister Perry who said it was “beautiful.” Though I composed it in my normal mode of requiring two people on the organ bench, we were blessed to have in our midst the college daughter of one of the stake presidency who is currently studying violin at the New England Conservatory of Music. She played the solo part. I don’t have a video of the actual meeting, but I do have a rehearsal video. If you would like to see it, please click on the link below — and don’t tell me wife there’s video of our unfinished basement on the internet. If you don’t have access to a good violinist (or other instrumentalist), two people at the organ still works great, as you will hear in the recording.

Though it was written for children’s choir, there is absolutely no reason you couldn’t use it with an adult or mixed choir.