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O My Father
SATB, Piano
Challenge Level: Challenging
Sheet Music Sound File
O My Father is well known by LDS congregations for its beautiful messages and the sense of longing to return home to our Heavenly Father. In my arrangement I attempt to emphasize both.
This one may be the most challenging of all my hymn arrangements. The notes are easy enough to find, but I have experimented a lot with meter. The arrangement explores many different ways of going back and forth between two, three and four beat rhythms.
In the first two verses the melody is sung in unison, first by the women and then by the men. The melodic meter is in three while that of the accompaniment is in four. Verse three is sung A Capella by the full choir and incorporates some metric switching between two and three sub-beats per beat. Verse four begins like the first verse and then rapidly grows to a climax on the phrase, "Let me come and dwell with you."
If your choir is like ours, plan on twice the time to get this one ready to perform. When performed well, you will stun your listeners with the majesty of this hymn and the power of its message. | 