This page includes piano recordings (both non-digital & MIDI). Please see full page footnote at bottom of this page*
PIANO 1906 upright Steinway
PIANO electric piano (midi)
I've no problem playing the Bach organ arrangement on an instrument with a pedal keyboard, but could never match the tempo adopted here for my arrangement if I tried to play the Bach on a piano!
(Video recording won't play with an open score. To follow recording with a score please print it.)
"Ubi Caritas"
The video (to the right) is a piano rendition of my own setting of the the “Lord’s Prayer” (originally 4 part as I composed it in 1982). This video is a recent rendition of my new 3 part version (recorded 05/09/23, over 70 years after I first tried out the same instrument as a toddler).
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"Lord of the Dance"
"AFRICAN AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM"
Carol Gloninger
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*My technique for composing hymn melody settings evolved over many years. I’d experimented with counterpoint in the early 70’s, but most of my attempts to compose liturgical music focused on original melody and lyrics. My voice part arrangements were conventional, and an organist/music director who was kind enough to accept a few of these, surprised me by fixing my voice settings! Full time jobs through the late 80’s were demanding to a point I was unable to build on this early success. In 1988 I got a job as business manager at a Catholic Church and when the position of organist opened in 1990, I was in an ideal place to move into it.
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The congregation, at that time wanted the old favorites, “Holy God…”, “Now Thank We”… etc. The organ arrangements for these traditional hymns left me with a sense the bass and inner voices weren’t doing much to enhance the melodies but I did my best to play them as they appeared in the hymn book.
The pastoral staff wanted mostly contemporary hymns, though. I took on this challenge, and began introducing “new age” hymns to choir and congregation. I liked many of them, as far as melody and lyrics were concerned, but giving them my best shot involved “fixing” many of the accompaniments. Sometimes the “fixes” amounted to little more than “patches”. Others, “Anthem” for example, were wholesale original arrangements. (Since the Anthem arrangement is actually 3 part(!) I’ve included a recording of it on the MUSIC page of this Website).
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Many of the new generation of liturgical composers depended on other musicians to arrange their hymns. Some of them inspired me: Sr. Theophane Hytrek and John Weissrock, to name two. I was delighted to play their arrangements of “Be Not Afraid”, “City of God”, and “Let the Valleys Be Raised” and grateful not to feel the usual urge to come up with my own. (I had little time. My position as organist, as happy as I was to have it, was only a side job.) I also played, “as is”, some great hymns by John Foley and Bernadette Farrell who composed without arrangement collaboration.
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There’s more regarding the development of my 3 part arrangements on the “BACKGROUND” page, but here, I’d like to touch on the benefit of adapting the technique for piano. My arrangements, whether adapted for organ or piano, seem to be in a permanent state of flux. At different points in time, I become aware of flaws or weaknesses that need work. It’s often a difficult passage that sets the revision process in motion. When fingering or pedaling solutions are not forthcoming, it gradually dawns on me that the intertwining lines of counterpoint must be in need of reshaping.
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When a well practiced arrangement becomes an assured possession, my critical faculty tends to go dormant. But when I set to work adapting that arrangement for another instrument, the critical faculty is aroused and gets busy!
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The piano used in the recordings is a 1901 upright Steinway. I first tried this instrument out in the early 1950’s in Norwalk, Connecticut, when visiting my great aunt and uncle there. Today, it is my life line to a nondigital recording option.