Blow Ye the Trumpet

Composer's Note

“Blow Ye the Trumpet" was the first music I wrote for my opera John Brown. It was the name of Brown’s favorite hymn. However, a number of different hymn tunes and verses have this same title. As I was unable to discover which version Brown knew, I chose the text I found most beautiful and appropriate — indeed, prophetic — for his life and death. The words seem to prophesy both the day of jubilee and the martyr's death which Brown knew would hasten the destruction of slavery. But none of the existing hymn tunes fit the words I found in Stephen Oates’s biography of Brown, so I gave them a new melody in the style of early American folk hymns. But the text I used was not that which Brown knew! Each line was the title of one of the hymns Brown loved the most.

An article I wrote for Chorus America, called “Confessions of a Hymn Bandit” tells the complicated story of the evolution of this work. (The article is reprinted in an appendix to my memoir Believe Your Ears.) I often have to correct writers who think my original work is an old hymn, just as I do those who believe that my piece, “Dan-u-el” is an arrangement of a spiritual with a similar name, rather than original music which sometimes uses the words of traditional spirituals.

Press

“Conductors seeking significant choral music will welcome … the strong and poetic ‘Blow Ye the Trumpet.’ … the finest in choral composition.”
— Choral Journal